Multistage soft decision equalization technique for MIMO systems in frequency selective channels

This article proposes a multistage soft decision equalization (SDE) technique for block transmission over frequency selective multi-input multi-output (MIMO) channels. Using the Toeplitz structure, the general signal model can be converted into a series of small-sized sub-signal models. For each sub-signal model, soft interference cancellation (SIC) is used firstly to remove partial effects of interfering symbols, then max-log-map sphere decoder is performed to get the desired a posteriori information. Simulation shows that with lower complexity the proposed method outperforms the probability data association SDE and the Schnorr-Euchner sphere decoder.