1. A method for mapping a given set of users with predetermined transmission rates and powers into an ordered partition for use in a multiple antenna receiver structure employing a successive group decoder and comprising: (i) selecting a group or subset from a set of users that maximizes a metric among all groups having a size less than a specified maximum group size when treating the remaining users as interferers; (ii) appending the selected group into an ordered partition and removing the users in the selected group from the set of users; and (iii) repeating steps (i) and (ii) until the set of users is empty; the metric for a candidate group G of users when treating the users in the set SG as interferers being based on M ⁡ ( G ) = min J ⊆ G ⁢ log ⁢  I + ( H ~ J ) * ⁢ ( I + H ~ S ⁢  ⁢ G ⁡ ( H ~ S ⁢  ⁢ G ) * ) - 1 ⁢ H ~ J  ∑ k ∈ J ⁢ R k where J is a subset of the set G, I is the identity matrix, {tilde over (H)} J includes channel realizations and transmit powers for users in the set J, {tilde over (H)} S/G includes the channel realizations and transmit powers for users in the set SG, and R k is the specified rate of user k.