Patent ID: 7979782

Claim:
A method of detecting a transport format of a multiplexed transport channel used for transferring binary data, said method comprising the steps of: determining, using at least one of a discrete circuit and a programmed processor, for every state of a trellis stage of a possible end bit position of a data block of said transport channel a path metric value which estimates likelihood for a hypothetical trellis path to end at a predetermined state; calculating for each possible end bit position the number (δ s ) of path metric values which indicate higher likelihood for the hypothetical trellis path to end at said predetermined state than an initial state; selecting a predetermined number of best end bit positions which lead to highest values of said number (δ s ) of path metric values by rejecting end bit positions which lead to path metric values smaller than a predetermined threshold value, and sorting non-rejected end bit positions in a list from highest to lowest path metric values; and performing error checking for said selected best end bit positions to detect said transport format.