Embodiments of an OFDM receiver and methods for decoding OFDM symbols of two or more data streams with reduced multiplication operations are generally described herein. Other embodiments may be described and claimed. In some embodiments, one or more terms of a modified L2-squared-norm cost function are precomputed and stored for predetermined complex symbol values of one or more tones of OFDM symbols prior to performing a searching process. During the searching process, the cost function is computed using the precomputed terms and received data symbols using shifting and adding operations, rather than multiplication operations. In other embodiments, non-L2-squared-norm cost functions are used.