An approximate MAP-based iterative receiver for MIMO channels using modified sphere detection

For coded multiple-input multiple-output spatial multiplexing (MIMO-SM) systems, the iterative receiver consisting of the MIMO detector and decoding can provide near optimal performance. While the sphere detection (SD) technique can be employed to implement the MIMO maximum likelihood (ML) detection with a lower complexity, some modifications of the SD have been proposed to provide a soft-decision for iterative receivers. In the paper, we propose an alternative approach that is based on a quadratic cost function to find the maximum a-posteriori (MAP) solution for the MIMO detection. Using the proposed approach, the MAP detection with the soft-decision can be straightforwardly implemented by the SD technique. Compared to the existing approach, in the new scheme, the soft-decision is well defined and it avoids a numerical instability in computing a soft-decision (which is an approximation of the log likelihood ratio (LLR)). Through simulation results, it is shown that the performance of the proposed scheme is comparable to that of the existing approach.