Survey on an efficient, low-complex tuple search based sphere detector

Nowadays, high detection complexity is known to be one of the major challenges in MIMO communications based on spatial multiplexing. Tuple search (TS) sphere detection was recently introduced, demonstrating to represent a promising approach in this context. It provides significant complexity reduction in comparison to conventional algorithms, providing in addition close to full max-log-APP BER performance. Due to the increasing multiplicity of communication standards as well as variety of mobile applications demanded by users, tackling the lack of flexibility of common receiver realizations has become an additional key challenge in MIMO detection. Aim of this work is to demonstrate that the benefit provided by the tuple search strategy is still present in a wide range of possible transmission schemes. For this purpose, a novel efficiency indicator is introduced, based on which an exhaustive analysis is performed. The existing tuple search detector has been adapted to deal with different constellation orders and transmit/receive antenna configurations. In addition, the applied MMSE strategy has been modified to support undetermined systems. The obtained results show the superiority of the proposed sphere detector under different transmission conditions, thus demonstrating its efficiency and flexibility.