1. A method for building a look-up table for a receiver, comprising: simulating a multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) detector over a plurality of channel realizations, wherein the MIMO detector used by the simulator is known to have achieved a desired performance; tracking channel metric and parameter values used for each channel realization resulting from such simulating; determining a plurality of the best values from the tracked values comprising: determining a first parameter value equal to a mean of a set of tracked first parameter values for a particular channel realization; determining a second parameter value equal to the mean of a set of tracked second parameter values for the particular channel realization, the first and second parameter values each rounded to an integer; and storing, in a sparsely populated look-up table, the plurality of best values of the tracked values used for a particular channel metric.