Patent ID: 7478313

Claim:
A decoding apparatus, comprising: a first soft decoder performing a first soft decoding of input data to correct errors in the input data and outputting first soft-decoded data; a de-interleaver de-interleaving the first soft-decoded data corresponding to an interleaving order used upon encoding; a second soft decoder receiving the first soft-decoded data, performing a second soft decoding of the first soft-decoded data, and outputting second soft-decoded data and additional information indicating a success or failure of the decoding of the first soft-decoded data; a hard-decision unit performing, according to the additional information, a hard-decision for successfully decoded data of the second soft-decoded data to restore original data; a reserving unit reserving a portion of non-decoded data of the second soft-decoded data for the first soft-decoded data to be inserted into: an interleaver performing interleaving of the data, and outputting the interleaved data; and a data insertion unit inserting an output of the first soft-decoder in the portion of the interleaved data output from the interleaver and feeding back resulting data indicative thereof to the first soft decoder, wherein the first soft-decoder performs repeated decoding.