A receiver comprises multiple receiving antennas configured to receive bitstreams transmitted from multiple transmission antennas; a bitstream candidate estimator configured to estimate a prescribed number of bitstream candidates among possible combinations of the received bitstreams and to calculate reliability information for each of the candidates; a bit-based estimator configured to produce a bit-based estimation result for each bit of the transmitted bitstreams based on the estimated candidates and the associated reliability information, the bit-based estimation result being adjusted by an adjusting criterion determined by the reliability information; and a decoder configured to decode the transmitted bitstreams based on the adjusted bit-based estimation result.