A novel minimum bit-error rate (MBER) space–timeequalization (STE)-based multiuser detector (MUD) is proposed for multiple-receive-antenna-assisted space-division multiple-access systems. It is shown that the MBER-STE-aided MUD significantly outperforms the standard minimum mean-square error design in terms of the achievable bit-error rate (BER). Adaptive implementations of the MBER STE are considered, and
both the block-data-based and sample-by-sample adaptive MBER algorithms are proposed. The latter, referred to as the least BER (LBER) algorithm, is compared with the most popular adaptive algorithm, known as the least mean square (LMS) algorithm. It is
shown that in case of binary phase-shift keying, the computational complexity of the LBER-STE is about half of that required by the classic LMS-STE. Simulation results demonstrate that the LBER algorithm performs consistently better than the classic LMS
algorithm, both in terms of its convergence speed and steady-state BER performance.