Low-Complexity Massive MIMO Detectors Based on Richardson Method

In the uplink transmission of massive (or large-scale) multi-input multi-output (MIMO) systems, large dimensional signal detection and its hardware design are challenging issues owing to the high computational complexity. In this paper, we propose low-complexity hardware architectures of Richardson iterative method-based massive MIMO detectors. We present two types of massive MIMO detectors, directly mapped (type1) and reformulated (type2) Richardson iterative methods. In the proposed Richardson method (type2), the matrix-by-matrix multiplications are reformulated to matrix-vector multiplications, thus reducing the computational complexity from O(U-2) to O(U). Both massive MIMO detectors are implemented using a 65 nm CMOS process and compared in terms of detection performance under different channel conditions (high-mobility and flat fading channels). The hardware implementation results confirm that the proposed type1 Richardson method-based detector demonstrates up to 50% power savings over the proposed type2 detector under a flat fading channel. The type2 detector indicates a 37% power savings compared to the type1 under a high-mobility channel.