Patent ID: 7231005

Claim:
A method of processing received symbol data r k within a communications system, comprising: (a) decoding the received symbol data r k to produce a soft symbol estimate ŝ k of the received symbol data r k ; (b) computing a reliability metric RM k associated with the soft symbol estimate ŝ k computed in step (a); (c) computing a probability metric p k based upon the reliability metric RM k computed in step (b); (d) setting a reliability weight R k associated with and corresponding to the soft symbol estimate ŝ k to zero if the probability metric computed in the step (c) is less than or equal to a predetermined threshold value T; (e) setting the reliability weight R k to a non-zero value if the probability metric computed in the step (c) is greater than the predetermined threshold value T; (f) calculating a residual value z k relating to a difference between the soft symbol estimate ŝ k and the received symbol data r k ; and (g) generating output data comprising any of the soft symbol estimate ŝ k , the reliability weight, the residual value and the received symbol data r k .