Fast Maximum-Likelihood Decoder for Quasi-Orthogonal Space-Time Block Code

Motivated by the decompositions of sphere and QR-based methods, in this paper we present an extremely fast maximum-likelihood (ML) detection approach for quasi-orthogonal space-time block code (QOSTBC). The proposed algorithm with a relatively simple design exploits structure of quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) constellations to achieve its goal and can be extended to any arbitrary constellation. Our decoder utilizes a new decomposition technique for ML metric which divides the metric into independent positive parts and a positive interference part. Search spaces of symbols are substantially reduced by employing the independent parts and statistics of noise. Symbols within the search spaces are successively evaluated until the metric is minimized. Simulation results confirm that the proposed decoder’s performance is superior to many of the recently published state-of-the-art solutions in terms of complexity level. More specifically, it was possible to verify that application of the new algorithms with 1024-QAM would decrease the computational complexity compared to state-of-the-art solution with 16-QAM.