A method for demodulating signals in a multi-input multi-output (MIMO) receiver includes obtaining a transformed vector by a coordinate transformation of a received observation vector using a unitary matrix determined through QR decomposition of an estimated channel matrix; maintaining a list containing nodes along with a cost metric for each node; using the list to generate soft-outputs in the form of log-likelihood ratios (LLRs) for selected symbols of interest, based on the transformed vector and a lower triangular matrix determined through QR decomposition of the estimated channel matrix and the constellations to which the input symbols belong.