Patent ID: 8887023

Claim:
A method of searching among a plurality of candidate codewords for a desired codeword for a telecommunications system, the method comprising: decoding one or more received N-dimensional FEC vectors using a plurality of Dorsch decoders; creating a first modified received N-dimensional FEC vector by removing a distance contribution of at least one dimension of a first received N-dimensional FEC vector from among the one or more received N-dimensional FEC vectors when a comparison of values indicates that a bit position value of a first candidate codeword of the plurality of candidate codewords and a corresponding bit position value of the first received N-dimensional FEC vector have a same sign, and a magnitude of the first received N-dimensional FEC vector in the corresponding bit position value is greater than a value of one; computing a distance of the first modified received N-dimensional FEC vector from the first candidate codeword; and identifying the first candidate codeword as the desired codeword for the telecommunications system if the calculated distance is within the predetermined confidence threshold, and repeating the calculating and comparing steps in relation to a second candidate codeword of the plurality of candidate codewords if the first candidate codeword is not within the predetermined confidence threshold.