A method of soft symbol processing in a communication receiver as part of a Turbo equalization processing for a received communication signal comprising: receiving Log Likelihood Ratios, LLRs, from a decoder in said communication receiver that correspond to bits in one or more interfering symbols in the received communication signal received by the communication receiver ; calculating expected bit values for the bits in each interfering symbol as a function of the corresponding LLRs; calculating a second moment of the expected symbol value for each interfering symbol using one or more terms comprising the expected bit values of only those bits in the interfering symbol that are magnitude-controlling bits in accordance with a defined bit-to-symbol mapping of a defined constellation used to modulate the interfering symbol for transmission; and wherein the method is characterized by when the defined constellation is the 64-QAM constellation of the 3GPP standard, calculating an expected soft symbol value s n and its variance value σ n 2 as: R s ̅ n = 1 42 ⋅ tanh L n , 0 2 ⋅ − 2 ⋅ tanh L n , 2 2 + tanh L n , 2 2 ⋅ tanh L n , 4 2 + 4 I s ̅ n = 1 42 ⋅ tanh L n , 1 2 ⋅ − 2 ⋅ tanh L n , 3 2 + tanh L n , 3 2 ⋅ tanh L n , 5 2 + 4 σ n 2 = 1 − 16 42 ⋅ tanh L n , 2 2 + tanh L n , 3 2 − 4 42 ⋅ tanh L n , 4 2 + tanh L n , 5 2 + 8 42 . tanh L n , 2 2 ⋅ tanh L n , 4 2 + tanh L n , 3 2 ⋅ tanh L n , 5 2 − R s ̅ n 2 − I s ̅ n 2 , wherein determining the expected bit values according to the hyperbolic tangent function that maps LLRs to expected bit values comprises, for a given LLR of a given one of the bits in one of the one or more interfering symbols , indexing into a stored Look-Up Table, LUT, comprising a plurality of pre-computed results of the hyperbolic tangent function for a range of LLRs, and wherein the LLR of the i -th bit in the n -th interfering symbol in the received communication signal is denoted as L n , i and wherein the hyperbolic tangent function is expressed as tanh L n , i 2 . receiving Log Likelihood Ratios, LLRs, from a decoder in said communication receiver that correspond to bits in one or more interfering symbols in the received communication signal received by the communication receiver ; calculating expected bit values for the bits in each interfering symbol as a function of the corresponding LLRs; calculating a second moment of the expected symbol value for each interfering symbol using one or more terms comprising the expected bit values of only those bits in the interfering symbol that are magnitude-controlling bits in accordance with a defined bit-to-symbol mapping of a defined constellation used to modulate the interfering symbol for transmission; and wherein the method is characterized by when the defined constellation is the 64-QAM constellation of the 3GPP standard, calculating an expected soft symbol value s n and its variance value σ n 2 as: R s ̅ n = 1 42 ⋅ tanh L n , 0 2 ⋅ − 2 ⋅ tanh L n , 2 2 + tanh L n , 2 2 ⋅ tanh L n , 4 2 + 4 I s ̅ n = 1 42 ⋅ tanh L n , 1 2 ⋅ − 2 ⋅ tanh L n , 3 2 + tanh L n , 3 2 ⋅ tanh L n , 5 2 + 4 σ n 2 = 1 − 16 42 ⋅ tanh L n , 2 2 + tanh L n , 3 2 − 4 42 ⋅ tanh L n , 4 2 + tanh L n , 5 2 + 8 42 . tanh L n , 2 2 ⋅ tanh L n , 4 2 + tanh L n , 3 2 ⋅ tanh L n , 5 2 − R s ̅ n 2 − I s ̅ n 2 , wherein determining the expected bit values according to the hyperbolic tangent function that maps LLRs to expected bit values comprises, for a given LLR of a given one of the bits in one of the one or more interfering symbols , indexing into a stored Look-Up Table, LUT, comprising a plurality of pre-computed results of the hyperbolic tangent function for a range of LLRs, and wherein the LLR of the i -th bit in the n -th interfering symbol in the received communication signal is denoted as L n , i and wherein the hyperbolic tangent function is expressed as tanh L n , i 2 . <EOS>