Sphere decoder and decoding method thereof

Abstract

A sphere decoder sets a Euclidean distance between a lattice vector obtained by using an MMSE or ZF estimate and a received signal as an initial radius, further reduces the initial radius, and searches lattices points included inside a hypersphere with the further reduced initial radius. In addition, one lattice vector having a minimum Euclidean distance is output. One dimension is selected to reduce an initial radius, and estimates in other dimensions are kept fixed, excluding the selected dimension. Then candidate lattice points are searched in the selected dimension, excluding a current estimate, such that a minimum Euclidean distance and a lattice point estimate corresponding to the minimum Euclidean distance are obtained. The initial radius is updated by the minimum Euclidean distance, and a final lattice vector is constructed by combining a lattice point estimate corresponding to the initial radius and the lattice point estimates in other dimensions.