Patent ID: 8421654

Claim:
A method for decoding a received data signal, corresponding to a transmitted data signal transported by a transmission channel, wherein said method comprises applying the received data signal to a decoder device: progressively constructing a decoding tree with the decoder device, in which a node corresponds to a component of a symbol of said data signal, and is associated with a cost, wherein said constructing implements at least two iterations of the following steps, for a current node of the tree stored in a first stack, in which each iteration makes it possible to store, in a second stack, a path between a root node of the tree and a leaf node: selection of at least one son node of said current node belonging to a predetermined selection interval, if at least one such node exists; storage, in said first stack, of the selected son nodes and the associated costs; deletion, from said first stack, of said current node; selection from said first stack of a new current node, taking into account the associated cost; and if said new current node is a leaf node that does not have any son node, storage of the path between the first node of said tree, called the root node, and said leaf node, in the second stack, and deletion of the leaf node from the first stack; otherwise, return to the step of selection of at least one son node for said new current node; wherein said method comprises assigning a likelihood probability to bits of at least one symbol of the data signal, taking into account paths stored in the second stack, and wherein said method comprises determining a probabilistic estimation of said data signal, taking into account the path(s) stored in the second stack and likelihood probabilities.