Bridging the Gap between Design and Implementation of Soft-Detectors for Turbo-MIMO Wireless Systems

Wireless communication is one of the most rapidly growing segments of telecommunications, with applications ranging from voice communication to broadband internet access. New systems and standards, like fourth generation cellular (4G), high-throughput wireless local area networks (WLAN) and worldwide interoperability for microwave access (WiMAX), are being investigated to increase the data rates and reliability of existing wireless systems. One common feature of these systems is the inclusion of multiple input-multiple output (MIMO) technology, which can provide significant capacity increases compared to single-antenna systems by employing multiple antennas at both transmitter and receiver. However, advanced MIMO techniques are required to fully exploit that higher capacity. One alternative to approximate the capacity of a MIMO channel involves building the turbo-processing principle into the MIMO system, resulting in what is known as a turbo-MIMO system. A high-complexity iterative turbo-scheme that combines a soft-MIMO detector and a channel decoder is then required at the receiver. Although such a system has been extensively studied from a theoretical point of view, the high-complexity soft-MIMO detection stage still poses a number of major unsolved challenges from an implementation point of view. This project addresses those challenges, concentrating on the algorithm design and rapid prototyping of soft-MIMO detectors.