Scalable equalizer for multiple-in-multiple-out (MIMO) wireless transmission

1. A method comprising:

obtaining a received signal that was transmitted over a wireless channel using spatially diverse transmission, the received signal comprising multiple subcarriers; and

recursively computing a signal-to-noise-ratio (SNR) of the received signal while receiving channel response information of the wireless channel derived from the received signal;

wherein the recursively computing comprises recursively updating a diagonal kernel matrix, the method further comprising generating an equalization matrix from the recursively updated diagonal kernel matrix, the equalization matrix being useable in equalizing the received signal across the multiple subcarriers.

2. The method of claim 1 , further comprising:

receiving the channel response information comprising a channel response matrix;

performing a QR decomposition of the channel response matrix;

recursively updating an upper triangular kernel matrix; and wherein

the generating the equalization matrix comprises generating the equalization matrix from the recursively updated diagonal kernel matrix and the recursively updated upper triangular kernel matrix.

3. The method of claim 2 , wherein the performing the QR decomposition and the generating the equalization matrix occur during preamble processing of the received signal, the method further comprising:

storing a matrix, Q, resulting from the QR decomposition, in memory;

storing the equalization matrix, G, in memory; and

performing data field processing comprising Q matrix equalization, z=Q*y, and G matrix equalization, {circumflex over (x)}=G·z.

4. The method of claim 2 , wherein the performing the QR decomposition comprises using a coordinate rotation digital computer (CORDIC) module.

5. The method of claim 2 , wherein the recursively updating the kernel matrices comprises distributing processing of the kernel matrices across tone preambles of an orthogonal frequency division multiplexed (OFDM) multiple-in-multiple-out (MIMO) constellation.

6. The method of claim 1 , wherein the obtaining the received signal comprises:

receiving multiple data streams over the wireless channel with multiple antennas; and

processing the received data streams in compliance with an IEEE 802.11n wireless communication standard to generate the received signal.

7. A non-transitory storage medium encoding a program operable to cause one or more machines to perform operations comprising:

obtaining a received signal that was transmitted over a wireless channel using spatially diverse transmission, the received signal comprising multiple subcarriers; and

recursively computing a signal-to-noise-ratio (SNR) of the received signal while receiving channel response information of the wireless channel derived from the received signal;

wherein the recursively computing comprises recursively updating a diagonal kernel matrix, the operations further comprising generating an equalization matrix from the recursively updated diagonal kernel matrix, the equalization matrix being useable in equalizing the received signal across the multiple subcarriers.

8. The storage medium of claim 7 , the operations further comprising:

receiving the channel response information comprising a channel response matrix;

performing a QR decomposition of the channel response matrix;

recursively updating an upper triangular kernel matrix; and wherein

the generating the equalization matrix comprises generating the equalization matrix from the recursively updated diagonal kernel matrix and the recursively updated upper triangular kernel matrix.

9. The storage medium of claim 8 , wherein the performing the QR decomposition and the generating the equalization matrix occur during preamble processing of the received signal, the operations further comprising:

storing a matrix, Q, resulting from the QR decomposition, in memory;

storing the equalization matrix, G, in memory; and

performing data field processing comprising Q matrix equalization, z=Q*y, and G matrix equalization, {circumflex over (x)}=G·z.

10. The storage medium of claim 8 , wherein the performing the QR decomposition comprises using a coordinate rotation digital computer (CORDIC) module.

11. The storage medium of claim 8 , wherein the recursively updating the kernel matrices comprises distributing processing of the kernel matrices across tone preambles of an orthogonal frequency division multiplexed (OFDM) multiple-in-multiple-out (MIMO) constellation.

12. The storage medium of claim 7 , wherein the obtaining the received signal comprises:

receiving multiple data streams over the wireless channel with multiple antennas; and

processing the received data streams in compliance with an IEEE 802.11n wireless communication standard to generate the received signal.