A detection algorithm for the V-BLAST system

The use of multiple antennas at the transmitter and receiver results in enormous capacity increase. However, the performance of many current space-time architectures like Vertical Bell Laboratories Layered Space-Time (V-BLAST) are not optimum in the maximum likelihood (ML) sense. We present a new algorithm, which aims at bridging this gap for the V-BLAST system. Both optimum detection and original V-BLAST detection are special cases of this algorithm. In addition, any in-between performance-complexity can be achieved by suitably choosing two parameters. Moreover, with little increase in computational power, a very high improvement in error performance over the original V-BLAST algorithm is achieved.