Patent ID: 7894513

Claim:
A method for slicing a received signal in a slicer, comprising the steps of: receiving a signal to be sliced in an input of said slicer; identifying, by said slicer, an ideal signal point in a constellation of ideal signal points in a planar signal space wherein the constellation of ideal signal points includes a plurality of decision regions, each decision region having a plurality of ideal signal points distributed throughout, the identified ideal signal point being located closer to the received signal than other ideal signal points in the constellation of ideal signal points; determining, in circuitry coupled to the slicer input, an angle of the identified ideal signal point with respect to an origin; determining, in said circuitry, an average power of all of the plurality of ideal signal points in the constellation of ideal signal points; generating, in said circuitry, a signal representing a decision point having a predetermined magnitude equal to a magnitude of the average power of all of the plurality of ideal signal points in the constellation of ideal signal points and an angle equal to the determined angle; and assigning the decision point associated with the determined decision region to the received signal; wherein said decision regions are defined as respective regions between adjacent boundary angles, said boundary angles adjusted to be bisectors between adjacent angles representing respective points in the constellation of ideal signal points.