Patent ID: 6980607

Claim:
A method for blockwise decoding a data signal, which comprises: in a transmitter, using a turbo coder to error protection code the data signal; transmitting the data signal using a radio channel; providing a receiver having a turbo decoder with two feedback symbol estimators; using the turbo decoder to detect the data signal by having at least one of the symbol estimators execute a plurality of recursions in order to calculate output values for a data block; and selecting each one of the plurality of the recursions from a group consisting of a forward recursion over a subinterval of the data block and a backward recursion over a subinterval of the data block, the plurality of the recursions including a plurality of forward recursions over subintervals, the subintervals for the plurality of the forward recursions covering the data block completely, each of the subintervals for the plurality of the forward recursions being D(VR) data values long and the subinterval for the backward recursion being D(RR) data values long, the data values corresponding to the formula: D(RR) =D(VR) x L, where L is a failback depth of a convolutional coder that is used to error protection code the data signal.