The layered maximum a posteriori (L-MAP) algorithm has been proposed to detect signals under frequency selective fading multiple input multiple output (MIMO) channels. Compared to the optimum MAP detector, the L-MAP algorithm can efficiently identify signal bits, and the complexity grows linearly with the number of input antennas. The basic idea of L-MAP is to operate on each input sub-stream with an optimum MAP sequential detector separately by assuming the other streams are Gaussian noise. The soft output can also be forwarded to outer channel decoder for iterative decoding. Simulation results show that the proposed method can converge with a small number of iterations under different channel conditions and outperforms other sub-optimum detectors for rank-deficient channels.