Patent ID: 7590925

Claim:
An apparatus for determining a detected puncture position for a de-puncturing process, the apparatus comprising: a slicing unit for slicing each of received symbols according to a hard decision rule to generate a first bit stream; a delay line coupled to the slicing unit for delaying the first bit stream to generate a second bit stream; a convolutional decoder for receiving a stream of the received symbols and performing the de-puncturing process and a decoding process to generate a third bit stream, wherein the de-puncturing process is performed according to a puncture position indicated by a puncture position signal, and the decoding process is performed according to a surviving path maintained by the convolutional decoder; and a puncture decision unit coupled to the delay line and the convolutional decoder, for generating the puncture position signal to indicate the puncture position, wherein the puncture position is one of possible puncture positions, and comparing the second bit stream and the third bit stream to generate an error metric corresponding to the puncture position, and then determining the detected puncture position by selecting one of the possible puncture positions according to the error metrics corresponding to possible puncture positions.