In this paper, we propose a trellis-search based soft-input soft-output detection algorithm and its very large scale integration (VLSI) architecture for iterative multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) receivers. We construct a trellis diagram to represent the search space of a transmitted MIMO signal. Withthe trellis model, we evenly distribute the workload of candidates searching among multiple trellis nodes for parallel processing. The search complexity is significantly reduced because the number of candidates is greatly limited at each trellis node. By leveraging the trellis structure, we develop an approximate Log-MAP algorithm by using a small list of largest exponential terms to compute the LLR (log-likelihood ratio) values. The trellis-search baseddetector has a fixed-complexity and is very suitable for parallel VLSI implementation. As a case study, we have designed and synthesized a trellis-search based soft-input soft-output MIMO detector for a 4 4 16-QAM system using a 1.08 V TSMC 65 nm technology. The detector can achieve a maximum throughput of1.7 Gb/s with a core area of 1.58 mm.
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