Abstract: In the multiple input multiple output (MIMO) system, the complexity of the successive interference cancellation (SIC) algorithm is relatively low, but there exists the error propagation problem which severely limits the performance of the system. In order to mitigate the impact of the error propagation, in this paper an algorithm that combines the detection and decoding is presented for the vertical Bell Laboratory Layered Space-Time (V-BLAST) system. The decoded signal can feed back to the MIMO detector and a module for ordering is added between the detector and decoder. The received code words are ordered by a proposed criterion using the soft information of the code words, and the most reliable one is decoded first. Then the detected symbols become more accurate and are subtracted from the received signals. The simulation results show that the proposed algorithm can prevent the error propagation efficiently and its performance is better than that of the traditional receive methods.