Patent ID: 6912685

Claim:
An apparatus for decoding a Reed-Muller code in which information data is encoded by using mask symbols and orthogonal codes, the information data including a first portion and a second portion, the apparatus comprising: an arithmetic operation unit to calculate an exclusive OR of a first Reed-Muller code and each of a plurality of mask patterns to obtain a first exclusive OR output, each of the mask patterns representing an exclusive ORed value of the mask symbols and the first portion of the information data; a first decoder to decode a part of the second portion of the information data that corresponds to the orthogonal codes by calculating a checksum of the first exclusive OR output to obtain a plurality of checksum outputs and deciding by majority a value of each of the checksum outputs; a second decoder to decode a remaining part of the second portion of the information data by calculating a second exclusive OR of the first exclusive OR output and a product of the part of the second portion of the information data and the orthogonal codes to obtain a second exclusive OR output, and deciding by majority a value of the second exclusive OR output; a Reed-Muller encoder to encode the decoded second portion of the information data and the first portion of the information data into a plurality of second Reed-Muller codes corresponding to the mask patterns, the decoded second portion including the decoded part and the decoded remaining part output from the first decoder and the second decoder; a Euclidean distance calculator to calculate a Euclidean distance between the first Reed-Muller code and each of the second Reed-Muller codes to obtain a plurality of Euclidean distances; and a minimum distance detector to detect a minimum Euclidean distance among the Euclidean distances to decode the information data using one of the mask patterns that corresponds to the minimum Euclidean distance.