Methods and systems for soft-bit demapping

1. A receiver, comprising:

an equalizer that equalizes a received data stream to generate an equalized data stream;

a soft-bit slicer, coupled to the equalizer, that receives the equalized data stream and generates one or more preliminary soft-bit values, said preliminary soft-bit values corresponding to one or more bits of a data symbol contained in the received data stream; and

a post-scaler that scales said preliminary soft-bit values to generate final soft-bit values;

wherein the soft-bit slicer is configured to iteratively generate said preliminary soft-bit values, whereby a preliminary soft-bit value corresponding to a first bit of the data symbol is used to generate preliminary soft-bit values corresponding to subsequent bits of the data symbol.

2. The receiver of claim 1 , further comprising:

a coefficient calculator, coupled to the equalizer and the soft-bit slicer, that provides configuration parameters to the equalizer and the soft-bit slicer according to a desired mode of operation and modulation scheme of the receiver.

3. The receiver of claim 2 , wherein the coefficient calculator provides the equalizer with a matrix of weight coefficients representative of channel response and noise estimates, and wherein the equalizer multiplies said received data stream by said weight matrix to generate said equalized data stream.

4. The receiver of claim 1 , wherein the equalizer is configurable to accommodate one or more of the following transmit/receive antenna modes of operation:

a single transmit antenna and a single receive antenna;

a single transmit antenna and multiple receive antennas; and

multiple transmit antennas and multiple receive antennas.

5. The receiver of claim 1 , wherein the soft-bit slicer implements maximum likelihood soft-bit slicing.

6. The receiver of claim 1 , wherein the soft-bit slicer is configurable to accommodate one or more of the following modulation schemes:

BPSK;

QPSK; and

QAM.

7. The receiver of claim 1 , wherein the soft-bit slicer implements the following equation for BPSK modulation:

Λ R,0 =y R ,

where Λ R,0 is a preliminary soft-bit value of a BPSK-modulated transmitted data symbol, and y R is the real part of a received equalized data stream corresponding to said transmitted data symbol.

8. The receiver of claim 1 , wherein the soft-bit slicer implements the following equations for QPSK modulation:

Λ R,0 =y R

Λ I,0 =y I

where Λ R,0 and Λ I,0 are respectively preliminary soft-bit values of the first and second bits in a QPSK-modulated transmitted data symbol, and y R and y I are respectively the real and imaginary parts of a received equalized data stream corresponding to said transmitted data symbol.

9. The receiver of claim 1 , wherein the soft-bit slicer implements the following equations for 16-QAM modulation:

Λ R,0 =y R

Λ R,1 =2·(REF* K )−|Λ R,0 |

Λ I,0 =y I

Λ I,1 =2·(REF* K )−|Λ I,0 |

where Λ R,0 , Λ R,1 , Λ I,0 , Λ I,1 are respectively preliminary soft-bit values of the first, second, third, and fourth bits in a 16-QAM-modulated transmitted data symbol, y R and y I are respectively the real and imaginary parts of a received equalized data stream corresponding to said transmitted data symbol, REF is a mode-dependent constant, and K is a modulation-dependent constant.

10. The receiver of claim 1 , wherein the soft-bit slicer implements the following equations for 64-QAM modulation:

Λ R,0 =y R

Λ R,1 =4·(REF* K )−|Λ R,0 |

Λ R,2 =2·(REF* K )−|Λ R,1 |

Λ I,0 =y I

Λ I,1 =4·(REF* K )−|Λ I,0 |

Λ I,2 =2·(REF* K )−|Λ I,1 |

where Λ R,0 , Λ R,1 , Λ R,2 , Λ I,0 , Λ I,1 , Λ I,2 are respectively preliminary soft-bit values for the first, second, third, fourth, fifth, and sixth bits in a 64-QAM-modulated transmitted data symbol, y R and y I are respectively the real and imaginary parts of a received equalized data stream corresponding to said transmitted data symbol, REF is a mode-dependent constant, and K a modulation-dependent constant.

11. The receiver of claim 1 , wherein the soft-bit slicer implements the following equations for 256-QAM modulation:

Λ R,0 =y R

Λ R,1 =8·(REF* K )−|Λ R,0 |

Λ R,2 =4·(REF* K )−|Λ R,1 |

Λ R,3 =2·(REF* K )−|Λ R,2 |

Λ I,0 =y I

Λ I,1 =8·(REF* K )−|Λ I,0 |

Λ I,2 =4·(REF* K )−|Λ I,1 |

Λ I,3 =2·(REF* K )−|Λ I,2 |

where Λ R,0 , Λ R,1 , Λ R,2 , Λ R,3 , Λ I,0 , Λ I,1 , Λ I,2 , Λ I,3 are respectively preliminary soft-bit values for the first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth bits in a 256-QAM-modulated transmitted data symbol, y R and y I are respectively the real and imaginary parts of a received equalized data stream corresponding to said transmitted data symbol, REF is a mode-dependent constant, and K a modulation-dependent constant.

12. The receiver of claim 1 , wherein the post-scaler multiplies each of said preliminary soft-bit values by a scaling factor and a modulation-dependent constant.

13. The receiver of claim 12 , wherein the post-scaler implements the following equation:

L =Λ*SCALE*4* K,

where L is a final soft-bit value corresponding to a bit in a received data symbol, Λ is a preliminary soft-bit value received from the soft-bit slicer, SCALE is a scaling factor, and K is a modulation-dependent constant.

14. The receiver of claim 13 , wherein at least a portion of the equation implemented by the post-scaler is performed in a logarithmic domain.

15. The receiver of claim 2 , wherein the post-scaler uses scaling factors received from the coefficient calculator to scale the preliminary soft-bit values, such that the generated final soft-bit values have uniform dynamic ranges for all modes of operation and all signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) conditions.

16. The receiver of claim 12 , wherein the coefficient calculator generates said scaling factors based on noise variance information.