Stopping Criterion for Complexity Reduction of Sphere Decoding

• Published in: IEEE communications letters Vol. 13; no. 6; pp. 402 - 404
• Main Authors: Zheng Ma, Honary, B., Pingzhi Fan, Larsson, E.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York, NY IEEE 01.06.2009; Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Applied sciences; Coding, codes; Complexity; Constellations; Criteria; Decoding; Degradation; Detection algorithms; Detectors; Exact sciences and technology; Information, signal and communications theory; Iterative algorithms; Iterative decoding; Lattice reduction; Lattices; Least squares method; MIMO; Mobile communication; Performance degradation; Reduction; Signal and communications theory; Silicon carbide; Simulation; sphere decoding; TECHNOLOGY; TEKNIKVETENSKAP; Telecommunications and information theory; Wireless communication; Alphabet; Performance evaluation; MIMO system; Least squares problem; Decoding; Lattice reduction; Degradation; sphere decoding; Stopping rule; Simulation; MIMO; Maximum likelihood; Signal to noise ratio
• ISSN: 1089-7798; 1558-2558; 1558-2558
• DOI: 10.1109/LCOMM.2009.090112

Maximum-likelihood detection in MIMO communications amounts to solving a least-squares problem with a constellation (alphabet) constraint. One popular method that can be used to solve this problem is sphere decoding. We show in this letter that by employing a simple stopping criterion, it is possible to significantly reduce the complexity of sphere decoding over a wide range of SNRs, without a noticeable performance degradation. Specifically, simulation results demonstrate that a 10%-90% reduction of the average complexity could be achieved.