Fixed-point Receiver based on Low-Complexity
K-Best decoder for coded MIMO-OFDM Systems
Rida EL Chall 1 , Fabienne Nouvel 1 , Maryline Hélard 1 , and Ming Liu
1
INSA, IETR, CNRS UMR 6164, F-35708 Rennes, France
2
Beijing Key Lab of Transportation Data Analysis and Mining, Beijing Jiaotong University, Beijing, China
Email:{relchall, fabienne.nouvel, maryline.helard}@insa-rennes.fr, mingliu@bjtu.edu.cn
Abstract—Iterative receiver is a promising solution to enable
high data rates and reliable communications for coded MIMO-
OFDM systems. However the practical realization of such a
receiver involves numerous challenges. In this paper, we present
an efficient fixed-point arithmetic of iterative receiver based on
low-complexity K-Best decoder in order to reduce the hardware
costs in terms of area and execution time. The performance of
fixed-point receiver is then evaluated with different modulation
orders, channel decoders and LTE channel models. Simulation
results show that fixed-point format achieves almost the same bit
error rate performance than floating-point one.
I. I NTRODUCTION
In order to achieve the high data rate requirements of
future wireless communication systems, advanced techniques
are nowadays investigated and adopted into the emerging
standards such as IEEE 802.11, 802.16, 3GPP long term
evolution (LTE). Multiple-input multiple-output MIMO tech-
nology by using multiple antennas at transmitter and receiver
offers an increase of channel capacity and link reliability.
Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) tech-
nique is generally combined with MIMO technique to combat
the inter-symbol interference in multi-path propagation and
to achieve better spectral efficiency. Meanwhile, advanced
forward correction codes such as turbo codes or LPDC codes
are able to achieve performance close to theoretical limits.
In such a coded MIMO-OFDM system, iterative receiver
is able to achieve near capacity [1]. Such a receiver consists
of soft-input soft-output (SISO) detector and channel decoder
that exchange soft reliable information. Several sub-optimal
detectors have been proposed in the literature to reduce
the complexity of maximum a posteriori probability (MAP)
detector. These solutions include linear equalization, interfer-
ence cancellation and tree search-based detection. Examples
include minimum mean square error-interference cancellation
(MMSE-IC) [2], single tree search sphere decoder (STS-SD)
[3], K-Best decoder [4] and fixed sphere decoder (FSD) [5]. K-
Best and FSD algorithms perform a breadth-first search and are
hence more attractive in practical implementation than STS-
SD as they offer a best trade-off between performance and
complexity [6].
Theoretically, floating-point representation is typically used
to evaluate the performance of the system. However, when
considering practical systems, fixed-point design must be
considered for an efficient use in terms of area and execution
time. The conversion into a fixed-point format requires to
2
specify a finite word length with a specific number of bits for
integer parts and for fractional parts. However, this conversion
has a great impact on the performance of the system due to
the reduced dynamic range and the precision inaccuracy.
In this paper, we present an efficient fixed-point representa-
tion for the overall iterative receiver. We describe the approach
used in order to convert floating-point algorithm into fixed-
point one. Then, we evaluate the performance of the iterative
receiver with different modulation orders and LTE-A channel
environments.
The rest of this paper is organized as follows. Section II
provides the MIMO-OFDM system model and the principle
of iterative detection and decoding. Low complexity K-Best
decoder is introduced in section III. Section IV illustrates
the process of the conversion of the receiver into fixed-point
format. The BER performance of the system is then evaluated
in section V. We conclude the paper in section VI.
II. MIMO-OFDM S YSTEM M ODEL
We consider a MIMO-OFDM system with Nt transmit
antennas and Nr receive antennas ( Nr ≥ Nt ) as depicted
in Figure 1. At the transmitter, the information bits u are
first encoded. The coded bits c are then interleaved and gray-
mapped into complex symbols of 2Q quadrature amplitude
modulation (QAM) constellation, where Q is the number of
bits per symbol. The symbols are then spatially multiplexed
over Nt transmit antennas. IFFT is applied to Nc parallel
symbols to obtain the time domain OFDM symbols, where
Nc is the number of sub-carriers. The symbols are then sent
though the radio channel after the addition of the cyclic prefix
(CP) which is assumed larger than the maximum excess delay
of the channel.
At the receiver, after the removal of the CP, the FFT is
performed to get the frequency domain received vector yk =
[y1 , y2 , ..., yNr ]T that can be expressed as:
yk = Hk sk + nk , k = 1...Nc , (1)
where k is the index of sub-carriers. For simplicity, the sub-
carrier index k is omitted in the sequel. H is the Nr × Nt
channel matrix with its (i, j)th element hi,j the channel
frequency response from j th transmit antenna to ith receive
antenna. n = [n1 , n2 , ..., nNr ]T is an independent and identi-
cally distributed (i.i.d) additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN)
vector with zero mean and σn2 variance.
 Transmitter through the accumulated partial Euclidean distance (PED) di
IFFT
Channel Mapping
MIMO
with d2Nt +1 = 0 as follows [3]:
Encoder Π QAM Mapper ⋮
IFFT
 2
 2Nt
X 
 
di = di+1 + ỹi −
 Ri,j sj  i = 2Nt , ..., 1
 j=i 
Receiver | {z }
FFT mC
Channel Demapper
MIMO i (5)
Decoder Π-1 QAM Detector ⋮ Q/2
FFT N0 X
+ (|LA (xi,b )| − xi,b LA (xi,b )),
Soft 2
Π Mapper
b=1
| {z }
Fig. 1: MIMO-OFDM system block diagram using bit interleaved coded mA
i
modulation with iterative detection and decoding.
where mC A
i and mi denote the channel-based partial metric and
The task of the receiver is to recover the transmitted symbols the a priori-based partial metric at the ith level, respectively.
from co-antenna interference. An iterative detection-decoding K-Best decoder performs a breadth-first search in the tree
process can be therefore performed as shown in Figure 1. The by expanding each of the K survival paths to all possible
MIMO detector and the channel decoder exchange soft infor- children nodes in the constellation. Then, the K-Best decoder
√
mation in terms of log-likelihood ratio (LLR). The channel computes and sorts all K 2Q PEDs and keeps only the K
decoding can be performed either by an LTE turbo decoder or nodes with minimum distances until reaching the leaf nodes.
an LDPC decoder, which exchanges soft information between In the case of iterative receiver, a list L of the most promising
their inner decoders. In our iterative process, we denote the candidates is used in the computation of LLR values:
number of outer iterations between the MIMO detector and the
1 1
channel decoder by Iout and the number of iterations within L (xi,b ) = min {d1 } − min {d1 } . (6)
N0 L∩χ−1 N 0 L∩χ+1
the channel decoder by Iin . i,b i,b

The complex system model can be modeled as an equivalent The major drawbacks of K-Best decoder are the expansion
2Nr × 2Nt real system using real value decomposition: and the sorting operations that are very time consuming.
       The low-complexity K-Best (LC-K-Best) decoder recently
Re (y) Re (H) − Im (H) Re (s) Re (n)
= + , proposed in [6] uses two improvements over the classical K-
Im (y) Im (H) Re (H) Im (s) Im (n)
(2) Best decoder for the sake of lower complexity and latency.
where Re (.) and Im (.) represent the real and the imaginary The first improvement simplifies the hybrid enumeration of
parts of the variables, respectively. This equivalent model will the constellation points in real valued system model when
be adopted in our work. the a priori information is incorporated into the tree search
using two look-up tables. The second improvement is to
III. L OW- COMPLEXITY K-B EST D ETECTION use a relaxed on-demand expansion that reduces the need of
exhaustive expansion and sorting operations [6].
In the case of iterative MIMO receiver, with the max-log-
MAP approximation, the LLR of the bth bit in the ith transmit IV. F IXED - POINT CONVERSION
symbol, xi,b , can be computed as [1]: The conversion into a fixed-point format can be decomposed
into two principal steps: determination of dynamic range and
1 1 accuracy evaluation. Two distinct approaches can be used to
L (xi,b ) ≈ min {d1 } − min {d1 } , (3)
N0 χi,b
−1 N0 χ+1
i,b evaluate the fixed-point representation of the system: simula-
tion based approaches and analytical approaches. Simulation
2
d1 = ky − Hsk − N0 log P (s) (4) based approaches can be applied to all types of system. How-
ever, their main drawback is their long execution time. The
where d1 represents the Euclidean distance between the re- analytical approaches try to find a mathematical expression
−1
ceived vector y and lattice points Hs. χ+1i,b and χi,b denote but can only be applied for linear systems. In a nonlinear
th th
the sets of symbol vectors in which the b bit in i antenna and unsmooth operations, the analytical approach is difficult
equal to +1 and −1 respectively. P (s) represents the a priori to be evaluated. Therefore, in our study, simulation based
information provided by the channel decoder in the form of a approaches are used to find the fixed-point representation
priori LLRs. length. The system is decomposed into many sub-blocks,
Using real-valued model, the channel matrix H can be then the required fixed-point representation length of each
decomposed into an unitary matrix Q and an upper triangular variable is determined in each sub-block. The different steps
matrix R. Exploiting the triangular nature of R, the detection for the conversion of the algorithm into a fixed-point format
problem can be thought of as a tree search problem with is summarized in Figure 2.
2Nt levels. Starting from the root node at level 2Nt + 1, First, floating-point of each variable is converted into
the Euclidean distance metric d1 can be recursively evaluated suitable fixed-point arithmetic through the evaluation of its
 Floating-point V. S IMULATION R ESULTS
algorithm In this section, we evaluate the BER performance of the
Range estimation retained fixed-point format with different modulation orders
and coding schemes. The simulations are based on a 4 × 4
Fixed-point
conversion
spatially multiplexed MIMO-OFDM system. Rayleigh channel
Accuracy evaluation model is first used, then real channel models are considered in
order to evaluate the performance of the fixed-point receiver
in more realistic scenarios. The 3GPP LTE(A) channel en-
vironments with low, large delay spread values and Doppler
Performance +1
evaluation
frequencies are hence considered with the LTE turbo code.
Not acceptable The low spread channel is the Extended Pedestrian A Model
Acceptable (EPA) which emulates the urban environment with small cell
sizes (τrms = 43 ns). The Extended Typical Urban Model
Implementation
(ETU) is the large spread channel which has a larger excess
Fig. 2: Fixed-point conversion process. delay (τrms = 991 ns) and simulates extreme urban, suburban
and rural cases. For all cases, the channel is assumed to be
dynamic range and its precision. The floating-point algorithm
perfectly known at the receiver. Table II shows the principle
is considered as a reference one. We denote by iwl the the
parameters of the simulations including the OFDM parameters.
number of bits for integer part which corresponds to the
dynamic range and by and f wl the number of bits of fractional TABLE II: Simulation Parameters.
part corresponding to the accuracy or precision. The dynamic MIMO system 4 × 4 Spatial multiplexing

range (iwl) of each variable is estimated by determining Modulation 2Q -QAM (4, 16, 64)-QAM, Gray mapping
Flat Rayleigh fading
its maximum and minimum value through examining its Channel type EPA (τmax = 410 ns , τrms = 43 ns, fm = 5 Hz)
histogram under simulations to avoid overflow problem. The ETU (τmax = 5000 ns , τrms = 991 ns, fm = 300 Hz)
Number of sub-carriers N (Nc ) 1024 samples (600 used)
precision is determined by specifying a minimum number Cyclic Prefix (CP) Normal 5.2µs-4.7 µs
Bandwidth 10 MHz
of fractional bits (f wl). In the last step, the performance Carrier frequency fc 2.4GHz
of the system is evaluated and compared with the reference Detector
Single tree-search (STS)
LC-K-Best decoder (K = 8, 16, 32)
algorithm. In most communication system, BER is used as LTE turbo code [13, 15]o
Rc = 1/2, 3/4, Block Length Kb = 2, 048 bits
a metric for the performance evaluation. If the performance Channel decoder
LDPC code (IEEE 802.11n)
of the system is not acceptable, we increase the precision Rc = 1/2, 3/4, Codeword Length Nb = 1, 944 bits

of each variable while keeping the other variable unchanged. Interleaver Random, size = 2, 048 (Turbo)
Inner iteration Iin = 2 (turbo) Iin = [3,4,6,7] (LDPC)
We repeat this step until the desired performance is obtained. Outer iteration Iout = 4
The required fixed-point representation length for system
variables has been found through long simulations for different Figure 3 depicts BER results of the fixed-point receiver
modulation orders and channel models. A quantization of in the case of Rayleigh fading channels. As a reference,
channel decoder parameters is first carried out followed by the floating-point curves of STS-SD and LC-K-Best decoder
a quantization of channel coefficients, received signal and are plotted. The simulations show that fixed-point algorithm
detector parameters. Table I summarizes the retained fixed- performs very close to the floating algorithm in the case of
point representation. 4-QAM and 16-QAM. A performance loss of 0.2 dB at 10−5
TABLE I: Fixed-point representation of system variables. is observed compared to STS-SD. However, in the case of 64-
Parameters (iwl,f wl) QAM with a coding rate Rc = 3/4 the retained quantization
parameters entail a BER performance loss of 0.25 dB at a
Constellation symbol s(sRe , sIm ) (2,9)
BER level of 2 × 10−5 . We show that this gap is reduced by
Channel coefficients hij (3,7) increasing the accuracy of the accumulated distance metric. A
Channel
Noise variance N0 (1,10)
precision of 9 bits is sufficient to achieve a performance close
LLR (4,3) to floating-point one in this case. An accuracy of 9 bits for
Turbo decoder γ̄ (5,3)
ᾱ, β̄ (6,3) distance metrics and QRD are therefore adopted.
Figure 4 shows BER performance of the fixed-point receiver
y (4,7)
Dist di U∗ (5,7), U(5,9) with LDPC decoder in Rayleigh fading channels. We show
K-Best decoder
Q (3,7), (3,9) also that fixed-point curves achieves almost the same perfor-
R (4,7), (4,9) mance as floating-point curves with a degradation less than
ỹ (4,7), (4,9)
LLR (4,3) 0.1 dB in the case of 16-QAM and less than 0.2 dB in the
∗ U refer to unsigned fixed-point arithmetic. case of 64-QAM.
Figure 5 shows the BER performance of the fixed-point
receiver in the case of real channel models (EPA and ETU).
The results show that fixed-point representation presents sim-
 0 4 × 4 SM, Turbo code, Rayleigh 0 (a) EPA , fd = 5Hz, N = 1024
10 10

64-QAM Fixed
4-QAM 16-QAM 64-QAM 4-QAM 16-QAM
Rc = 1/2 Rc = 3/4 Float
10
−1 Rc = 1/2 Rc = 1/2 Rc = 3/4 10
−1

STS-SD

−2 −2
10 10
BER

BER
−3 −3
10 10

STS-SD, Float
−4 LC-K-Best, Float −4
10 10
Fixed-Dist(5,7)
Fixed-Dist(5,9)
−5 −5
10 10
−4 −2 0 2 4 6 8 10 0 5 10 15
Eb /N0 [dB] Eb /N0 [dB]
Fig. 3: BER performance of fixed-point LC-K-Best based receiver for a 4 × 4
coded MIMO system on Rayleigh channel using 4-QAM, 16-QAM and 64- (c) ETU , fd = 300Hz, N = 1024
0
QAM, Iout = 4, Iin = 2, Turbo decoder with Rc = 1/2, 3/4 and Kb = 10
2, 048 is used.
Fixed
4-QAM 16-QAM 64-QAM
−1 Rc = 1/2 Rc = 3/4 Float
4 × 4 SM, LDPC code, Rayleigh 10
0 STS-SD
10

4-QAM 16-QAM 64-QAM −2

−1 Rc = 1/2 Rc = 1/2 Rc = 3/4 10
10
BER

−3
−2 10
10
BER

−4
−3 10
10

STS-SD
−4
10 Float
Fixed
−5
10
−4 −2 0 2 4 6 8 10
Eb /N0 [dB]
Fig. 4: BER performance of fixed-point LC-K-Best based receiver for a 4 × 4
coded MIMO system on Rayleigh channel using 4-QAM, 16-QAM and 64-
QAM, Iout = 4, Iin = [3, 4, 6, 7], LDPC decoder with Rc = 1/2 (4-
QAM,16-QAM),Rc = 3/4 (64-QAM) and Nb = 1, 944 is used.
ilar performance as the reference floating-point curves in the
case 4-QAM and 16-QAM. However, there is a performance
loss of less than 0.2 dB in the case of 64-QAM at a BER level
of 1×10−4 . We can see that STS-SD slightly outperforms LC-
K-Best decoder by about 0.2 dB with 4-QAM, 16-QAM and
0.1 dB with 64-QAM at a BER level of 1 × 10−4 . Hence our
fixed-point arithmetic is able to achieve a performance close
to floating-point one.
VI. C ONCLUSION
This paper introduced an efficient fixed-point representation
of the iterative receiver based on LC-K-Best decoder. The
conversion process has been first presented in order to deter-
mine a suitable fixed-point format for the overall receiver. The
performance of fixed-point receiver has been compared with
floating-point performance using different modulation orders,
channel decoders and channel models. Simulation results show
−5
10
0 5 10 15
Eb /N0 [dB]
Fig. 5: BER performance of fixed-point LC-K-Best based receiver for a 4 × 4
coded MIMO system on (a) EPA, and (b) ETU channels, Iout = 4, Iin = 2.
Turbo decoder with Rc = 1/2 (4-QAM,16-QAM),Rc = 3/4 (64-QAM) and
Kb = 2, 048 is used.
that fixed-point representation achieves similar performance as
floating-point system.
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