Embodiments can include receiving transmissions over a channel at a receiver of a MIMO communication system; the transmissions are received from a plurality of transmitters in communication with the receiver. Each communication is a separate communication having a modulation and coding scheme. An estimate of the channel is converted into an estimate, for each of a plurality of transmitters, of a bit-metric decoding rate for each of a plurality of MIMO detectors. The estimated bit-metric decoding rate for each of the transmitters for each of the MIMO detectors is converted into an estimated bit error rate for each of the MIMO detectors for each of the transmitters. One of the MIMO detectors is selected for use in generating log-likelihood ratios for bits transmitted from the transmitters to the receiver. The one of the MIMO detectors is selected based on the estimated bit-error rates and a target block error rate.