3.2 Gbps Channel-Adaptive Configurable MIMO Detector for Multi-Mode Wireless Communication

A configurable, channel-adaptive K-best MIMO detector for multi-mode wireless communications that adapts computation to varying channel conditions to achieve high energy-efficiency is presented. An 8-stage configurable MIMO detector supporting up to a 4×4 MIMO array and BPSK to 16-QAM modulation schemes has been implemented and simulated in 0.80V, 22nm Tri-gate CMOS process. Dynamic clock gating and power gating enable on-the-fly configuration and adaptive tuning of search radius K to channel response which results in 10% to 51% energy-efficiency improvement over non-adaptive K-best MIMO detectors. During unfavorable channel conditions, the MIMO detector satisfies target BER by setting K=5. For favorable channel conditions, K is reduced to 1, where 22nm circuit simulations show 68% energy reduction. At 1.0GHz target frequency, the total power consumption is 15mW (K=1) to 35mW (K=5), resulting in energy-efficiency of 14.2pJ/bit (K=1) to 44.7pJ/bit (K=5) and 3.2Gbps throughput.