VLSI implementation of hard- and soft-output sphere decoding for wide-band MIMO systems

Abstract

Multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) technology in combination with orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) is the key to meet the demands for data rate and link reliability of modern wide-band wireless communication systems, such as IEEE 802.11n or 3GPP-LTE. The full potential of such systems can, however, only be achieved by high-performance data-detection algorithms, which typically exhibit prohibitive computational complexity. Hard-output sphere decoding (SD) and soft-output single tree-search (STS) SD are promising means for realizing high-performance MIMO detection and have been demonstrated to enable efficient implementations in practical systems. In this chapter, we consider the design and optimization of register transfer-level implementations of hard-output SD and soft-output STS-SD with minimum area-delay product, which are well-suited for wide-band MIMO systems. We explain in detail the design, implementation, and optimization of VLSI architectures and present corresponding implementation results for 130 nm CMOS technology. The reported implementations significantly outperform the area-delay product of previously reported hard-output SD and soft-output STS-SD implementations.