Bridging the Gap Between MMSE-DFE and Optimal Detection of MIMO Systems

In this paper, we propose a novel low-complexity, near-optimal soft-input soft-output detector for N × M multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems. Our algorithm is based on the combination of minimum mean square error decision feedback equalization (MMSE-DFE) and conditional optimization. In a round-robin fashion, one symbol is detected using exhaustive search in such a way that all N × (M - 1) submatrices of the baseband channel matrix are considered and the one with the best metric is chosen. This search over all columns of the channel matrix, which can be performed in parallel, has the advantages of improving the performance of the hard-output version of the detector, and refining the list of candidates for efficient implementation of the soft-output detector for MIMO systems with error correcting codes. In particular, it is shown that the error performance of the soft-output system is comparable to that of the list sphere decoder (LSD) but with much smaller list size, and hence smaller complexity than the latter. We also analyze the performance and complexity of the proposed algorithm and discuss different techniques to further reduce its complexity without affecting the performance. Finally, the obtained theoretical results are validated via simulations.