Soft-Output Detection Methods for Sparse Millimeter-Wave MIMO Systems with Low-Precision ADCs

Abstract

In this paper, we propose computationally efficient yet near-optimal soft-output detection methods for coded millimeter-wave (mmWave) multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) systems with low-precision analog-to-digital converters (ADCs). The underlying idea of the proposed methods is to construct an extremely sparse inter-symbol-interference channel model by jointly exploiting the delay-domain sparsity in mmWave channels and a high quantization noise caused by low-precision ADCs. Then, we harness this sparse channel model to create a trellis diagram with a reduced number of states and a factor graph with very sparse edge connections, which are used for the computationally efficient soft-output detection methods. Using the reduced trellis diagram, we present a soft-output detection method that computes the log-likelihood ratios (LLRs) of coded bits by optimally combining the quantized received signals obtained from multiple receive antennas using a forward-and-backward algorithm. To reduce the computational complexity further, we also present a low-complexity detection method using the sparse factor graph to compute the LLRs in an iterative fashion based on a belief propagation algorithm. Simulations results demonstrate that the proposed soft-output detection methods provide significant frame-error-rates gains compared with the existing frequency-domain equalization techniques in a coded mmWave MIMO system using one- or two-bit ADCs.