Patent ID: 7336718

Claim:
A method for decoding a noisy signal provided from the coordinates of a point in a constellation of points, each constellation point being associated with a digital data item of a determined number of bits, comprising the steps of: determining, based on the noisy signal, components of a received point; determining a reference point associated with a digital reference data item and corresponding to the point in the constellation of points closest to the received point; determining at least one concurrent point corresponding to the point in the constellation of points closest to the reference point associated with a digital data item, having a bit of determined rank with a logic value opposite to the bit of determined rank of the reference data; and determining, at least for the bit of the reference digital data at said determined rank, a precision data item based on the received point, the reference point, and the concurrent point, wherein the determination of the bits of the digital data associated with the concurrent point is performed based on the values of some of the bits of the reference digital data and on said rank.