Patent ID: 6078626
Filing Date: 2000-06-20
Classification: H04L

Abstract:
A method of communicating information over a communications channel, the method comprising the steps of:modulating a source set of bits according to a modulation constellation to produce a modulated communications signal, wherein the modulation constellation is selected such that real and imaginary components of the modulated communications signal map to mutually exclusive first and second subsets of the source set of bits;communicating the modulated communications signal over the communications channel;determining soft information for the first subset of bits of the source set of bits from a real component of a product of a channel transfer characteristic and the communicated modulated communications signal, the channel transfer characteristic characterizing communications over the communications channel; anddetermining soft information for the second subset of bits of the source set of bits from an imaginary component of the product of the channel transfer characteristic and the communicated modulated communications signal.