Fixed Effort Sphere Decoder for MIMO OFDM
Systems
Nora Tax and Berthold Lankl
Institute for Communications Engineering
Munich University of the Bundeswehr
85579 Neubiberg, Germany
Email: <first name>.<last name>@unibw.de
Abstract—A new fixed effort Multiple Input Multiple Output
(MIMO) decoder for orthogonal frequency division multiplexing
(OFDM) is proposed. For enhancing the data rates in wireless
communication systems a higher bandwidth is needed, resulting in
a frequency selective channel with multiple reflecting transmission
paths. These requirements implicate additional considerations on
the dimension of channel memory. Therefore we get a higher
complexity for the decoder on the receiver side that can be
reduced by performing the equalization in the frequency domain
with OFDM, where each subchannel can be considered as a flat
MIMO channel. To achieve the optimum hardware exploitation
it is strongly necessary to find optimized effort based solutions
to be able to implement an efficient MIMO decoder in concrete
practical systems. Therefore our reduced search sphere decoder
(RS-SD) algorithm that performs the closest point search over
a reduced set of candidates based on pre-computed search set
missing probabilities and other common fixed effort algorithms
for flat MIMO channels are adapted to the OFDM system model.
Furthermore our new OFDM-RS-SD algorithm is proposed
quartering the needed computational effort compared to the RS-
SD by additionally considering the conditions of the different
subchannel matrices during the selection of the candidates.
Therefore the OFDM-RS-SD offers a higher flexibility reaching
near ML performance with significantly reduced computational
effort.
Keywords—MIMO detection, OFDM, line-of-sight, frequency
selective channel, sphere decoder, RS detector
I. I NTRODUCTION
Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) transmission
systems promise higher data rates and a better reliability for
a given signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and a fixed bandwidth
as described in [1] and [2]. The optimal detector in MIMO
systems is the maximum likelihood (ML) detector, which is not
suitable in practice due to its high computational effort. Hence
the MIMO challenge is the implementation of an efficient
MIMO detector with low effort for the separation of the
spatially multiplexed data streams.
The sphere decoder (SD) algorithm derived in [3] is based on
a closest point search in the lattice with reduced complexity
by searching in a defined hypersphere with decreasing search
radii. Thus a reduced but variable number of candidates is
used instead of searching over the entire constellation. The
SD provides ML performance, nevertheless with a variable
number of candidates resulting in an exponential complexity
up to ML complexity for a bad conditioned channel matrix
and low SNR. Therefore the SD algorithm is unfeasible for
the implementation in practical hardware systems.
978-1-4799-0308-5/13/$31.00 © 2013 IEEE
The K-Best (KB) algorithm depicted in [4] and the Fixed-
Complexity Sphere Decoder (FSD) algorithm illustrated in [5]
provide near ML performance with a fixed number of needed
computations but with a missing criterion for the selection of
the candidates at the different MIMO levels.
In [6] we proposed the reduced search sphere decoder (RS-
SD), which is performed over a fixed number of candidates
which are selected depending on the pre-computed search set
missing probabilities at each data stream. These probabilities
are calculated considering the noise power after the linear
compensation caused by the QR-decomposition of the chan-
nel matrix at each MIMO level. The RS-SD provides near
ML performance with a fixed computational effort given by
the number of selected candidates resulting in an optimum
hardware exploitation. This approach has been derived for flat
fading channels and is extended to a frequency selective indoor
channel with only a limited measurement bandwidth of 4 MHz
in [7]. In this scenario the measured channel impulse response
(CIR) contains of the line-of-sight (LOS) MIMO transmission
path with strong power and only one weak MIMO reflected
transmission path. Therefore the detection scheme is extended
by a decision feedback equalizer (DFE) with one tap in order
to remove the disturbing inter symbol interferences (ISI).
In this paper we assume a higher measurement bandwidth
which results in a much more frequency selective CIR with
more than one reflecting transmission path. These requirements
implicate additional considerations on the new dimension of
channel memory that leads us to a higher complexity for
the detector on the receiver side. This complexity can be re-
duced by performing the equalization in the frequency domain
with orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) [8].
Thus we propose a new reduced search algorithm for OFDM
(OFDM-RS-SD) with an intelligent candidate selection per-
formed over all levels and all subchannels resulting in a
remarkable reduction of the needed effort.
Hence, the paper is structured as follows: In section II the
system model for a MIMO OFDM system is illustrated and
the derivation of the resulting signal model is shown. In section
III the SD principle and two common SD algorithms with fixed
effort are shortly introduced. Besides, the idea of an intelligent
candidate selection of the RS-SD and the needed modifications
for the OFDM-RS-SD are presented. In addition we specify the
computational effort and depict the capability of the reduced
search algorithm to deliver soft output information. In Section
IV the simulation results are shown and the performance of
the different decoders and the needed computational effort are
compared. Finally our work will be concluded in section V.
 II. S YSTEM AND S IGNAL M ODEL FOR MIMO OFDM where n[l] ∈ CNr represents the additive white Gaussian
noise at the l-th received sample. We expect the noise to be
We assume a Nt × Nr MIMO System consisting of Nt
independent and identically distributed (i.i.d.), zero-mean with
transmit antennas and Nr receive antennas. OFDM is applied
the covariance matrix Rn = σn2 INr and the noise power σn2 at
to deal with the frequency selectivity of the communication
each receive antenna.
channel, where the frequency spectrum is divided into K dif-
The transmitted data vector x[l] results from the IDFT of
ferent subcarriers to create K frequency flat MIMO channels.
the data vector s at the time instance l which is composed
Thus we consider the principle of OFDM in a MIMO system
of symbols randomly chosen from the QAM constellation A
as shown in figure 1 and 2.
where the probability of occurrence of all symbols is uniformly
distributed. The average power at each transmit antenna is
normalized to 1 and the channel matrix is scaled by the factor
√ σ2
(1/ Nt ) resulting in a SNR of ρ = σx2 = σ12 per receive
n n
antenna.
In the following derivation we will have a closer look at the
d-th MIMO OFDM symbol consisting of K + Ng elements
where Ng ≥ Q is the length of the CP that acts as guard
interval preventing the ISI of neighboring OFDM symbols.
The transmitted block in the time-domain before adding the
CP is given by
 
s0 (d)
Fig. 1. Principle of OFDM in a MIMO transmitter. x(d) = (F−1 ⊗ INt )  ..
, (3)
 
.
At the transmitter the bit data stream is multiplexed among sK−1 (d)
the Nt transmitter branches. Afterwards the QAM mapping where F is the Fourier matrix with the dimension K × K
and the K-point inverse discrete Fourier transformation (IDFT) and the elements F(a, b) = exp(−j2π( ab
are performed separately for each antenna branch. To prevent K )), ⊗ depicts the
Kronecker product, INt describes the Nt × Nt identity matrix
ISI a cyclic prefix (CP) is added to the OFDM symbols. The and sk (d) contains the MIMO vector transmitted on the k-th
length must be at least as long as the CIR. subcarrier over all Nt transmit antennas.
The addition of the CP at the receiver and the removal at the
transmitter results in a block circulant channel matrix H with
∼
dimension KNt × KNr that leads to the following received
signal after the CP is removed:
H0 0 . . . 0 HQ . . . H1
 
.. .. . . .. 
 H1 H0
 . . 0 . . 
 . .. ..
.. ..

 .
 . . . 0 . . HQ 

e(d) = HQ HQ−1 . . . H0 0 . . . 0  x(d) + n(d). (4)
 
 . . . 
 0 HQ . . .. H0 0 .. 
 
Fig. 2. Principle of OFDM in a MIMO receiver.
 . .. .. .. .. 
 . . . . 0 
. 0 .
At the receiver the CP is removed first and the K-point 0 . . . 0 HQ HQ−1 . . . H0
discrete Fourier transformation (DFT) is performed for each
Finally the DFT is performed at the receiver side for each
receive antenna branch separately. The received signals of each
antenna branch separately to obtain the frequency-domain
subcarrier k can be detected as for the flat channel [9].
signal model which is given by
We assume that the channel is time invariant during the
transmission of one data burst and is described in the discrete- r(d) = (F ⊗ INr )e(d) (5)
time representation where the CIR can be recorded with Q + 1
= (F ⊗ INr )(Hx(d) + n(d))
time instances and the LOS component is depicted by the index ∼
q = 0. The CIR can be written as = (F ⊗ INr )(H(F− 1 ⊗ INt )s(d) + n(d))
∼
Q
G0 0 . . . 0
X  
H[l] = Hq δ[l − q], (1)
 0 G1 . . . 0 
q=0 =  . .. ..  s(d) + ñ(d), (6)
 .. ..
. . . 
where the complex matrix Hq ∈ CNt ×Nr indicates the q-th
MIMO transmission path at time instance l. Therefore the 0 ... 0 GK−1
signal model is given by where ñ(d) describes the frequency-domain noise and its
Q
X elements are expected to be i.i.d. and zero-mean. Moreover
e[l] = Hq x[l − q] + n[l] ∈ CNr , (2) the covariance matrix is given by Rñ = σñ2 INr and the noise
q=0 power is given by σñ2 .
The diagonal elements of the block diagonal matrix G repre-
sent the different MIMO channel matrices of the K subcarriers.
Each matrix element Gk has the dimension Nt × Nr and can
be written as
Q O(Nt2 |A|Nt ) for each subcarrier.
X kq
Gk = Hq exp(−jπ ). (7)
q=0
K B. Fixed-Complexity Sphere Decoder (FSD)
Therefore the MIMO detection can be performed for each
subcarrier k individually as for the flat MIMO channel.
rk (d) = Gk sk (d) + ñk (d) (8)
is the resulting signal model per subcarrier.
III. A LGORITHMS FOR S PHERE D ECODING
In this section we have a brief look at the SD algo-
rithm and common fixed effort sphere decoders, which we
already summarized in [6] and specify the needed complexity
and computational effort for the illustrated sphere decoders.
Afterwards we present the idea of the intelligent candidate
selection operated in the RS-SD algorithm and its needed
complexity before introducing the modifications for the new
proposed OFDM-RS-SD algorithm. Moreover we show the
capability of the reduced search algorithms to deliver soft
output information.
A. Sphere Decoder (SD)
The SD [10] is based on the closest point search in the
lattice providing ML performance with a reduced complexity.
The ML solution is achieved by searching in a hypersphere
with a defined radius around the received signal rk , instead
of searching over the whole constellation. To adapt the al-
gorithm to our OFDM signal model derived in (8) the QR-
decomposition is performed on the channel matrix Gk of
the k-th subcarrier with the assumption Nr ≥ Nt , leading
to the following equations valid for each subcarrier k with
n0k = QH ñk :
Gk = QU, (9)
yk = Q rk = Usk + n0k ,
H
(10)
with the sphere decoder solution:
kyk − Usk k2 .

ŝk,SD = arg min (11)
sk ∈Sk,R (yk ,U)
Because of the characteristics of the upper triangular matrix U,
the solution can be solved recursively and backwards along the
tree from level Nt to 1. At each level i the admissible set of
children of a particular parent in the tree is selected as possible
ML candidates. The search radius at level i depends on the
preselected radii of the previous levels. After a new candidate
was found the radius is updated with the new minimum
Euclidean distance. When the radius is so small that no more
points satisfy the sphere decoder solution (11) the last point
matching the sphere decoder solution is the ML solution.
The initial radius is arbitrarily defined and if the ML solution
should be found in any cases the radius has to be large enough
to include all candidates to definitely find the ML solution.
Therefore the SD achieves ML performance but with a variable
number of candidates resulting in exponential complexity for
a bad conditioned matrix and/or low SNR.
Thus the complexity of the SD algorithm is variable and is
able to reach ML complexity for the worst case scenario.
For the ML algorithm the search has to be executed over all
possible vector candidates resulting in a complexity order of
Other than the SD, the FSD proposed in [5] selects a
fixed number of candidates for the detection of the transmitted
symbols. Furthermore there is a small performance reduction
due to some preprocessing at the receiver before the decoding.
The algorithm makes use of some properties of the upper
triangular matrix U shown in [6] leading to the following
inequality which has to be met:
|A| ≥ E[Nk,Nt ] ≥ E[Nk,Nt −1 ] ≥ . . . ≥ E[Nk,1 ] ≥ 1, (12)
where E[·] represents the expectation operator and Nk,i the
number of selected candidates at level i. Due to the interference
from the other levels and the performed channel matrix column
ordering, more candidates are selected in the first level. The
number of candidates per subcarrier k can be written as:
Nt
Y
Nk = Nk,i . (13)
i=1
The complexity order of the FSD is given by the number
of selected candidates and can be written as O(2Nk Nt 2 ) for
each subcarrier as shown in [11]. However, there is a lack of
a criterion determining the number of candidates per level,
still resulting in a high complexity for achieving the ML
performance.
C. K-Best (KB)
The KB algorithm presented in [4] is a breadth-first tree
search algorithm that only considers the KB,k nodes with the
smallest partial Euclidean distance (PED) before continuing
with the next level. KB,k is chosen by an adjustment between
the BER performance and the computational complexity. Fur-
thermore the complexity of the KB algorithm can be divided
into the required complexity for the sorting stage and the
computation of the PED metrics resulting in the complexity
2
order of O(KB,k Nt +2KB,k Nt2 ) for each subcarrier. However,
the KB algorithm has a high complexity resulting from the
computation of the metrics and the sorting stages, because a
high number of comparators is needed.
D. Reduced Search Sphere Detector (RS-SD)
The RS-SD we proposed in [6] provides fixed effort for the
separation of the spatially multiplexed data streams based on
an intelligent candidate selection. The candidates are chosen
according to pre-computed search set missing probabilities,
which describe the probabilities that a transmitted symbol sk,i
does not belong to the search set Sk,i of selected hypothe-
ses at each level i. The one-dimensional search set missing
probability at level i in the k-th subcarrier can be written as
0


Pk,i sk,i ∈/ Sk,i |sk,i , zk,i , Nk,i , s̃k,i+1 = sk,i+1
!
Nk,i ∆A
≈ erfc √ , (14)
2 2σηk,i0
with the partial vector of the transmitted symbols sk,i+1 = the selection of the candidates per level and subcarrier which
T is only given by the RS-SD.
[sk,i+1 , . . . , sk,Nt ] and the zero-mean, complex Gaussian
0 We will exemplify the new strategy for the selection of the
noise ηk,i after the linear compensation with the upper trian-
gular matrix U resulting in the following noise power at each candidates with help of table I. For convenience we consider
level i: a 2 × 2 MIMO OFDM system with K = 4 subcarriers and 64-
QAM for this example. The first column of the table depicts the
 1 2 2
 
2
ση 0 = 
  σ 0 . (15) number of iterations already executed by the algorithms and
k,i ui,i  nk,i the following four columns show the number of candidates
Furthermore ∆A gives the distance between two neighboring that are already selected for the two levels of each subcarrier
symbols in the constellation A. The search set Sk,i on level k. Moreover the two lines within a row show the number of
i with the highest Pk,i has the highest probability that the candidates for the RS-SD (first line) and for the new OFDM-
candidate for the ML solution is not yet included in the search RS-SD (second line).
set Sk,i and therefore the number of candidates for this subset TABLE I
is increased, the initial radius for this level is enlarged and the E XAMPLE FOR THE CANDIDATE SELECTION IN A 2 × 2 MIMO OFDM
according probability is updated. S YSTEM WITH K = 4 SUBCARRIERS AND 64-QAM.
This process is continued until the total number of candidates
[N1,1 , N1,2 ] [N2,1 , N2,2 ] [N3,1 , N3,2 ] [N4,1 , N4,4 ]
supported by the hardware as in (13) is reached. After this
initialization process the starting radius for each level is 0 [1,1] [1,1] [1,1] [1,1]
determined and the solution satisfying the sphere decoder [1,1] [1,1] [1,1] [1,1]
constraint (11) can be obtained. The complexity order for the 1 [1,1] [3,1] [1,1] [1,1]
RS-SD algorithm per subcarrier O(2Nk Nt2 ) is given by the [1,1] [3,1] [1,1] [1,1]
number of selected candidates.
. . . . .
. . . . .
. . . . .
v [1,33] [3,5] [1,5] [5,3]
[1,33] [3,5] [1,5] [5,3]
v+1 [1,33] [3,9] [1,5] [5,3]
[1,64] [3,5] [1,5] [5,3]
. . . . .
. . . . .
. . . . .
end [1,33] [3,9] [1,33] [5,5]
[1,64] [3,5] [1,13] [5,5]
Nkmax 34 34 34 34
Fig. 3. Exemplary search set expansion strategy in the QAM constellation. 64 16 16 34
F 2FNk =16 2FNk =16 2FNk =16 2FNk =16
For the two-dimensional QAM complex constellation the pro- 4FNk =16 FNk =16 FNk =16 2FNk =16
posed search set expansion can be performed as shown in
figure 3. Some examples for possible search sets are illustrated
and their initial radii are marked with blue circles, hence the Specified by the hardware resources the total number of
spherical expansion around the received signal is depicted. The candidates in this example is limited to the number of N =
center of the circles are given by the received signal and can 136 candidates. For the RS-SD considering each subcarrier
be positioned all over the constellation with no need to directly separately with the same number of candidates we can achieve
max
match a constellation point. For 64-QAM for example the NRS = KNk,RS = 136 candidates by providing the maximum
max
possible numbers of candidates for this expansion strategy are number of candidates Nk,RS = 34 for each subcarrier k.
given by Nk,i = [1, 3, 5, 9, 13, 19, 25, 33, 64]. Thus with the Whereas the OFDM-RS-SD can have different numbers of
RS-SD we have a concrete criterion how the different initial candidates for the different subchannels with the limitation
radii for the Nt levels are determined, before the SD algorithm of the total number of candidates given by NOF DM −RS =
P K−1
is operated. k=0 Nk,OF DM −RS = 136. Due to simulation results
discussed later on, the maximum of Nk,OF DM −RS = 64
candidates per subcarrier is enough for a bad conditioned
E. OFDM Reduced Search Sphere Decoder (OFDM-RS-SD)
channel matrix to reach the SD performance. Hence we define
Contrarily to the previous presented decoders proposed the maximum number of candidates per subcarrier in this case
max
for flat MIMO channels and therefore only considering the as Nk,OF DM −RS ≤ 64.
Nt levels of each k-th subcarrier separately, the OFDM-RS- During the initialization of the algorithms the number of
SD takes into account that there are different conditioned candidates selected at each level i is set to 1 and the search
subchannel matrices Gk so that some subchannels may need set missing probabilities for the KNt = 8 search sets are
more and others may need less candidates to achieve the ML calculated. In this example the highest missing probability
performance. For that purpose we strongly need a criterion for during the initialization is calculated for the first level of the
second subcarrier. Therefore the number of selected candidates
N2,1 for this search set is increased to the next possible value
given by the expansion strategy in figure 3, the new candidates
are included, the corresponding probability P2,1 is updated and
the algorithm proceeds. After the v-th iteration the search set
missing probability P1,2 has the highest value in this example
but the RS-SD can not expand the search set in the first
max
subcarrier because otherwise the constraint Nk,RS = 34 is
not fulfilled any more. Hence, the RS-SD chooses the highest
search set missing probability in the subcarriers that still can
be extended, in this example the probability P2,2 and the
number of candidates N2,2 is increased. The OFDM-RS-SD
on the other hand has not reached its stop criterion for the first
subcarrier yet and is able to expand the number of candidates
N1,2 to the next possible value as seen after the (v + 1)-th
iteration. The according missing probabilities are updated and
the algorithms move on until all candidates within the given
constraints are selected. The final assignment and the maxi-
mum number of candidates Nkmax for each subcarrier needed
for the effort computation are shown in table I. Overall the
RS-SD proceeds the assignment column by column separately
and the OFDM-RS-SD executes the assignment line by line
always considering all subcarriers.
We define the computational effort F according to the maxi-
mum needed effort limited by the hardware resources and not
as an average effort over different realizations, because the
average effort is not an adequate performance measure for a
practical implementation. The maximum needed effort gives a
valid indication also for a bad conditioned matrix or a lower
SNR. To simplify matters each scalar complex addition is
counted with one flop and each scalar complex multiplication
is counted with three flops as in [11].
For the MIMO OFDM system, where we treat each subcarrier
as a separate flat MIMO channel the entire needed effort for
where yk,i is the unquantized linear solution at level i.
For the RS algorithms only the preselected symbols of the
reduced search set Sk,i need to be considered, leading to:
P
f (yk,i |s̃k,i (bk,ia = 1))
s̃k,i ∈Sk,i
L(bk,ia |yk,i ) ≈ ln P , (17)
f (yk,i |s̃k,i (bk,ia = 0))
s̃k,i ∈Sk,i
where the one-dimensional conditional probability density
function f (yk,i |s̃k,i (bk,ia )) = fk,i,a can be written as:
1 D{yk,i − s̃k,i (bk,ia )}2
fk,i,a = √ exp(− ). (18)
πσηk,i ση2k,i
The distance yk,i − s̃k,i (bk,ia ) has already been calculated
during the execution of the RS algorithms. Depending on a
being odd or even, D describes a real or imaginary operator.
Therefore no significant additional effort is required for the
LLR estimation and a soft output can easily be obtained.
IV. S IMULATION R ESULTS
Channel measurements for the indoor scenario with a
bandwidth of 40 MHz performed at our institute show that
we can assume a CIR in this scenario with a strong LOS
transmission path and three reflected signal parts decreasing
with exponential distribution, where the distance between the
paths equals the symbol duration Ts . To cover the worst case
scenarios and the statistics of the different possible antenna
setups we assume a Rayleigh fading environment and an
uncorrelated channel for our simulations. We refer to a 4 × 4
MIMO OFDM system using 64-QAM and K = 16 subcarriers
with the CIR length ofQ+1  = 4. The SNR per receive antenna
σ2
is given by (10 log10 σx2 ) and the channel matrix is scaled
√ n

the SD, FSD, KB and RS-SD algorithms can be calculated by by the factor 1/ Nt . Moreover we assume perfect channel
multiplying the needed effort per subcarrier k with the total knowledge at the receiver.
number of subcarriers K, because the different conditioned The computational effort that is needed in this scenario for
subchannel matrices Gk are not considered and therefore the the described algorithms is calculated according to the used
effort is the same for each subcarrier. But for the new OFDM- number of flops and can be found in table II. Because the
RS-SD we get different efforts for initialization and the DFT/IDFT are executed for all decoders,
PKthe different subcarriers they are not considered in the effort calculations.
resulting in FOF DM −RS−SD = k=0 FNk where FNk cor-
responds to the complexity order of O(2Nk Nt2 ).
Since the effort for the reduced search decoder almost rises TABLE II
linearly with the number of selected candidates the example in C OMPUTATIONAL EFFORT F FOR THE FIXED EFFORT SD ALGORITHMS
IN A 4 × 4 MIMO OFDM SYSTEM WITH K = 16 SUBCARRIERS .
table I shows that the needed effort for the RS-SD algorithm
FRS−SD = 4FNk =34 = 8FNk =16 and for the OFDM-RS-
RS-SD (16) 1.1 · 104 KB (10) 1.8 · 104
SD algorithm FOF DM −RS−SD = FNk =64 + 2FNk =16 +
FNk =34 = 8FNk =16 is the same but the number of candidates RS-SD (34) 2.2 · 104 KB (16) 3.4 · 104
in the different subcarriers varies for the OFDM-RS-SD and
therefore we expect the performance of the OFDM-RS-SD to RS-SD (64) 4.3 · 104 KB (34) 1.1 · 105
get closer to the ML solution. OFDM-RS-SD (16, 34) 1.1 · 104 FSD (34) 2.2 · 104

F. Soft Output OFDM-RS-SD (16, 64) 1.1 · 104 FSD (64) 4.3 · 104

To enable coded transmission, the used decoder has to OFDM-RS-SD (34, 64) 2.2 · 104 ML 4.3 · 109
provide a soft output information in form of values containing
the a posteriori probabilities of each information bit being 1
First we compare the fixed effort algorithms KB, FSD and
or 0. In [7] it is shown that the RS algorithms provide a
RS-SD to the reference of the SD which is reaching ML
simple calculation for the log-likelihood ratio (LLR) of the
performance with a variable effort. The results that are depicted
a-th transmitted bit on level i given by
in figure 4 show that the RS-SD (Nk = 64) already reaches
P (bk,ia = 1|yk,i ) the SD performance, whereas the FSD (64) with the same
L(bk,ia |yk,i ) = ln , (16)
P (bk,ia = 0|yk,i ) computational effort F as shown in table II denotes a loss of

Fig. 4. BER performance of SD algorithms for a 4×4 MIMO OFDM system
using 64-QAM and 16 subcarriers.
about 1 dB at the BER of 0.5 · 10−3 . Furthermore the RS-SD
(34) outperforms the KB (16), whereat the KB (16) requires
a higher computational effort. Due to the intelligent candidate
selection strategy, the RS-SD shows a performance close to the
SD with a fixed effort and a significant complexity reduction.
Therefore the simulation shown in figure 5 only considers
the RS-SD being compared to the proposed OFDM-RS-SD
algorithm. The first number in the brackets indicates the
maximum number of candidates which are needed for the
RS-SD reaching the same number of total candidates N and
the second number specifies the maximum possible number of
candidates for the OFDM-RS-SD within one subcarrier.
Fig. 5. BER performance of the OFDM-RS-SD for a 4 × 4 MIMO OFDM
system using 64-QAM and 16 subcarriers.
At first we consider the OFDM-RS-SD (34, 64) where the total
number of candidates is given by NOF DM −RS = 34K = 544
max
with the restriction Nk,OF DM −RS ≤ 64 for each subcarrier
already reaching the SD performance, but with only half the
effort compared to the RS-SD (64).
Assuming that the hardware resource is only limited to the
total number of NOF DM −RS = 16K = 256 candidates the
RS-SD (16) already denotes a loss of about 2 dB at the BER
of 0.2·10−3 compared to the SD solution. However the OFDM-
max
RS-SD (16, 34) with the extended constraint Nk,OF DM −RS ≤
34 for each subcarrier and the same effort as the RS-SD (16)
almost reaches a performance close to the RS-SD (34), but
with only half of the computational effort. Moreover with the
max
OFDM-RS-SD (16, 64) allowing Nk,OF DM −RS ≤ 64 candi-
dates as maximum for each subcarrier the SD performance is
reached and the computational effort can even be quartered
compared to the RS-SD (64).
V. C ONCLUSION
We presented a new fixed effort MIMO OFDM decoder
which is working in a frequency selective environment, based
on an intelligent candidate selection with the criterion of the
pre-computed search set missing probabilities also considering
the conditions of the different OFDM subchannel matrices.
We have shown that we can reach the SD performance by
quartering the needed computational effort compared to the
RS-SD, which assigns the candidates separately for each
subcarrier. The presented OFDM-RS-SD algorithm is able to
achieve near maximum likelihood performance but with a
significantly reduced complexity.
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