Radio telecommunications receiver operative to receive digital data symbols or bits by iterative determination of soft estimates, and a corresponding method

1. A radio telecommunications receiver operative to receive symbols or bits by iterative determination of soft estimates of symbols or bits followed by a hard decision as to what symbol or bit was intended, the receiver comprising:

a first processor operative to provide first soft estimates of symbols or bits of the received signal, the first processor being a successive interference cancellation (SIC) multiple input multiple output (MIMO) detector;

a second processor operative to decode the first soft estimates and to provide second soft estimates of the symbols or bits;

a combiner operative to provide third soft estimates back to the first processor for subsequent further decoding, the third soft estimates of each symbol or bit being dependent upon the respective second soft estimate and a respective previous second soft estimate;

a deinterleaver operative to deinterleave the first soft estimates from the SIC MIMO detector before the first soft estimates are passed to the second processor; and

an interleaver operative to interleave the third soft estimates provided by the combiner before the third soft estimates are passed back to the SIC MIMO detector.

2. The receiver of claim 1 , wherein, a plurality of iterations each involving the first processor, second processor and combiner are performed whereupon a hard decision is made as to what symbol or bit was intended.

3. The receiver of claim 1 , wherein,

the second processor is a convolutional decoder, turbo-decoder, or decoder of concatenated codes; and

the soft estimates are log likelihood ratios.

4. The receiver of claim 3 , wherein, the SIC MIMO detector undertakes detection on a per-bit basis by successive interference cancellation.

5. The receiver of claim 1 , wherein, the first processor is a convolutional decoder, turbo-decoder, or decoder of concatenated codes;

the second processor is a convolutional decoder, turbo-decoder, or decoder of concatenated codes; and

the soft estimates are extrinsic information values.

6. The receiver of claim 1 , further comprising:

a second combiner operative to provide adapted first soft estimates to the second processor, the adapted first soft estimates of each symbol being dependent upon the respective first soft estimate and a respective previous first soft estimate.

7. The receiver of claim 1 , wherein, the combiner is also operative to provide adapted first soft estimates to the second processor, the adapted first soft estimates of each symbol or bit being dependent upon the respective first soft estimate and respective previous first soft estimate.

8. A method of receiving symbols or bits in a radio telecommunications receiver by iterative determination of soft estimates of symbols or bits followed by a hard decision as to what symbol or bit was intended, the method comprising the steps of:

processing the received signal using a successive interference cancellation (SIC) multiple input multiple output (MIMO) detector to provide first soft estimates of symbols or bits of the received signal,

decoding the first soft estimates to provide second soft estimates of the symbols or bits,

deinterleaving the first soft estimates from the SIC MIMO detector before the first soft estimates are decoded to provide the second soft estimates;

producing third soft estimates dependent upon the second soft estimate and a previous second soft estimate of each symbol or bit;

providing the third soft estimates back to the SIC MIMO detector for subsequent further decoding; and

interleaving the third soft estimates before the third soft estimates are provided back to the SIC MIMO detector.