Provided is a maximum likelihood decoding method of separating and estimating multiple transmitted signals transmitted by multiple transmitter antennas from multiple received signals received by multiple receiver antennas, comprising: a first step of generating a channel matrix based on channel impulse responses corresponding to the received signals; a second step of dividing the generated channel matrix into multiple sub-matrices, of identifying parts of the received signals corresponding to the sub-matrices obtained through the division, and of transforming the sub-matrices obtained through the division, by using inverse matrices of the sub-matrices obtained through the division; a third step of applying QR decomposition to the transformed sub-matrices to obtain triangular matrices, and of transforming the received signals of the parts by using the obtained triangular matrices; and a fourth step of determining one combination candidate for the parts of the transmitted signals corresponding to the transformed received signals.