Patent ID: 8533571

Claim:
A method, executed by a system to process a sequence of signal samples and to furnish a sequence of composite codewords containing bits, the method comprising: maintaining a conveyor comprising a sequence of slots, including a start slot and an end slot, wherein each slot is adapted to contain one or more bits and wherein the conveyor is adapted to effectively move the bit content of each slot to an adjacent slot after the passage of a time step, whereby bits are conveyed from earlier slots to later slots with the passage of each subsequent time step; and, for each signal sample performing the steps of: representing the signal sample by a coarse codeword and a touchup codeword, each of the coarse codeword and touchup codeword containing bits; distributing the bits of the coarse codeword into slots in the conveyor; retrieving a delayed codeword from the end slot; and, combining the touchup codeword with the delayed codeword to furnish a composite codeword.