Patent ID: 8458578

Claim:
A method of generating a soft decision value using an Analog-to-Digital Converter (ADC) having a given resolution, the method comprising: receiving metric values calculated based on levels of a transmission signal and output levels of the ADC; selecting metric values corresponding to a level of a received signal from among the received metric values; detecting, from among the selected metric values, a first maximum metric value when a transmission bit is a first level, and a second maximum metric value when the transmission bit is a second level; and generating the soft decision value based on a difference between the first maximum metric value and the second maximum metric value, said generating the soft decision value including calculating the difference between the first maximum metric value and the second maximum metric value, wherein the ADC is a relatively low-resolution ADC in which the number of output levels is less than a desired value derived from the number of levels of the transmission signal, and the ADC is one of i) an ADC between 1 and 6 bits when a modulation method of the transmission signal is 16 Pulse Amplitude Modulation (PAM), ii) an ADC between 1 and 4 bits when the modulation method of the transmission signal is Quadrature Phase Shift Keying (QPSK), iii) a 1-bit ADC when the modulation method of the transmission signal is Binary Phase Shift Keying (BPSK), and iv) a 2-bit ADC when the modulation method of the transmission signal is Binary Phase Shift Keying (BPSK).