Analog MIMO detector: the concept and initial results

Abstract

In this contribution we propose an analogue receiver that can perform turbo detection in MIMO systems. The receiver is built from discrete non-linear analogue devices that perform detection in a "free-flow" network (no notion of iterations). This contribution can be viewed as an extension of analogue turbo decoder concepts to include MIMO detection. These first analogue implementations report reductions of few orders of magnitude in the number of required transistors, consumed energy and the same order of improvement in processing speed. Our implementation of MIMO decoder brings about the same advantages, when compared to traditional (DSP/FPGA) implementations.