A method of analyzing soft symbol information in a communication system that transmits multiple independent data streams is disclosed. The method includes setting a trellis structure using a fixed spatial delay constraint, calculating a joint probability between a targeted symbol and a set of observation samples either recursively or nonrecursively, and approximating a likelihood function for a given branch by a single probability density function with mean and variance computed based on available soft information on past symbols relative to the branch that is being currently considered.
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