Patent ID: 7298798

Claim:
An apparatus for decoding a received signal being modulated using one of a plurality of modulation based on a trellis diagram to output an decoded code, comprising: a plurality of subdecoding units, each receiving a plurality of symbols of received signal, and an estimate of the channel impulse response for decoding the received signal to output a local minimum metric and a code corresponding to the local minimum metric based on a corresponding subtrellis in the trellis diagram, a selector for selecting one of the codes from the plurality of subdecoding units as the decoded code based on an index signal, a minimum value determining unit for receiving the local minimum metrics from the plurality of subdecoding units, and generating the index signal that indicates which local minimum metric is the minimum one among the local minimum metrics, an actuating unit for receiving a mode indicating signal and determining states and branches in the subtrellis corresponding to each subdecoding unit, and a branch label generating unit for receiving the mode indicating signal and generating a plurality of branch labels of the subtrellis corresponding to each subdecoding unit, wherein the received signal contains at least one block code.