A low complexity multicarrier BLAST architecture for realizing high data rates over dispersive fading channels

Space division multiplexing (SDM) is a promising technique for significantly increasing the bandwidth efficiency and wireless transmission capacity. Vertical Bell Laboratories layered space-time (V-BLAST) is a scheme which exploits the rich scattered wireless channel by using multiple transmit and receive antennas. In order to make V-BLAST more robust against the detrimental effects of frequency selective and time varying channels, we combine V-BLAST with orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) transmission and Reed-Solomon coding. Owing to the required intensive computation involved, we propose a low complexity multicarrier V-BLAST based on the use of a subcarrier grouping, an innovative sub-optimal decoding ordering procedure, and the Gram-Schmitt orthogonalization (GSO) procedure instead of the pseudo-inverse operation used in V-BLAST. It is shown that the proposed system can greatly reduce the computational complexity required with a minimal penalty in performance compared with the exhaustive multicarrier V-BLAST.