A symbol detector with a sphere decoding method implemented therein. A baseband signal is received to determine a maximum likelihood solution using the sphere decoding algorithm. A QR decomposer performs a QR decomposition process on a channel response matrix to generate a Q matrix and an R matrix. A matrix transformer generates an inner product matrix of the Q matrix and the received signal. A scheduler reorganizes a search tree, and takes a search mission apart into a plurality of independent branch missions, wherein the search tree defines a full search depth Nfull. A plurality of Euclidean distance calculators are controlled by the scheduler to operate in parallel, wherein each has a plurality of calculation units cascaded in a pipeline structure to search for the maximum likelihood solution based on the R matrix and the inner product matrix.