Combining Fixed-Point and SORN Arithmetic in a MIMO BPSK-Symbol Detection Architecture

Sets-Of-Real-Numbers (SORN) Arithmetic derives from the Unum type-II number format and provides high throughput and low complexity computations at the cost of a very rough resolution. This work presents a symbol detection unit for MIMO transmission with a BPSK modulation which consists of a SORN preprocessor applying an exhaustive search method and a fixed-point module processing the results from the SORN unit. Different SORN datatypes and hardware configurations are considered and evaluated throughout BER simulations and postsynthesis analyses.