Abstract: In MIMO wireless communications employing LMMSE receiver, the symbols transmitted through a transmit antenna are estimated at the receiver in the presence of interference consisting of two main components: one due to the additive noise and the other due to (interfering) symbols transmitted via the remaining antennas. This has been shown to hamper the performance of a communication system resulting in incorrect symbol decisions, particularly at low SNR. IMMSE has been devised as a solution to cope with this problem; In IMMSE processing, the symbols sent via each transmit antenna are decoded iteratively. In each stage of processing, the received signal is updated by removing the contribution of symbols detected in the previous iterations. In principle, this reduces the additive interference in which the desired symbols are embedded in. Therefore, the interference level should reduce monotonically as one goes down in processing order.

Abstract: The present invention provides a concurrent gain generator for use with a MIMO transmitter having an N of two or more transmit antennas. In one embodiment, the concurrent gain generator includes a first sequence formatter that provides one of the N transmit antennas with a gain training sequence during an initial time interval, and a second sequence formatter that further provides (N?1) remaining transmit antennas with (N?1) additional gain training sequences during the initial time interval to train receive gains. The present invention also provides a non-concurrent gain adjuster for use with a MIMO receiver employing an M of two or more receive antennas. In one embodiment, the non-concurrent gain adjuster includes a gain combiner that computes a common receive gain as a function of M independent receive gains, and a gain applier that applies the common receive gain to receivers associated with the M receive antennas.

Abstract: A Hybrid IMMSE-LMMSE receiver processing technique predicts performance of and selects between iterative and non-iterative decoding of symbols based on an intelligent metric. Based on a pre-specified criterion, the receiver determines if a correct first-stage decision is made or not. If a correct decision is made, then it follows iterative processing like in BLAST. Alternatively, if a wrong decision is found to have occurred, the receiver resorts to LMMSE estimation processing.

Abstract: A preamble transmit power tailoring system for use with an Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) transmitter, a method of tailoring preamble transmit power, and an OFDM transmitter. In one embodiment, the preamble transmit power tailoring system includes (1) a peak power estimator configured to calculate, based on a payload to be transmitted by the OFDM transmitter and an associated transmit power limitation value, an available power headroom and (2) a preamble power enhancer, associated with the peak power estimator, configured to increase transmit power of at least a portion of a preamble for the payload subject to the available power headroom.

Abstract: For use with a multiple-input, multiple-output (MIMO) transmitter, a signal field controller, a method of controlling signal fields and a MIMO transmitter incorporating the controller or the method. In one embodiment, the controller includes: (1) a primary signal field mode indicator configured to cause a primary signal field to indicate a presence of a supplemental signal field and provide the primary signal field to the MIMO transmitter for transmission thereby and (2) a supplemental signal field generator coupled to the primary signal field mode indicator and configured to provide a supplemental signal field to the MIMO transmitter for further transmission thereby only when the primary signal field indicates the presence.

Abstract: A system comprises a wireless device that communicates across a spectrum having a plurality of sub-channels. The wireless device comprises a plurality of antennas through which the wireless device communicates with another wireless device, wherein each antenna communicates with the other wireless device via an associated communication pathway. The wireless device further comprises sub-channel power analysis logic coupled to the antennas and adapted to determine which communication pathway has the highest communication quality on a sub-channel by sub-channel basis. The wireless device still further comprises diversity selection logic coupled to the sub-channel power analysis logic and adapted to determine a weighting vector for an associated antenna based on the communication quality, wherein the weighting vector specifies a relative transmission power for each sub-channel for the associated antenna.

Abstract: A resynchronization method for use in a data communication system having a first device configured to transmit data at a symbol rate to a second device. The second device includes a Reed Solomon (RS) decoder having a RS lock indicator and a Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) Protocol Interface (MPI) having a MPI lock indicator, wherein the RS and the MPI lock indicators are monitored. Four different states, defined by the values of the RS and MPI lock indicators, determine whether the data communication system will wait for the RS decoder and the MPI hardware block to resynchronize, whether an intermediate-subset of the channel acquisition algorithm is performed or whether the entire channel acquisition algorithm is performed. The method for resynchronization described herein recovers synchronization within a predetermined time without the layers above the physical link layer having knowledge.