Patent ID: 7609787

Claim:
A method of decoding a signal modulated according to a multi-level coding technique, comprising at least two coding levels each having a distinct robustness to noise, said signal comprising a plurality of symbols (S r ) each comprising at least one bit, assigned to one of said coding levels, said method comprising: performing at least two successive decoding iterations with a decoder, each iteration comprising successive steps of decoding each of said at least one bit, at least one of the successive steps of decoding taking into account the result of at least one possible preceding step of decoding; determining the robustness to noise of said coding levels, the robustness to noise of a coding level being inversely proportional to the error rate of said coding level; and determining a decoding order according to the robustness to noise of said coding levels, wherein, during said decoding iterations, said bits ({tilde over (b)} 3 i , {tilde over (b)} 2 i , {tilde over (b)} 1 i ) are decoded according to said decoding order, said at least one bit assigned to one of said coding levels having a greatest robustness to noise, referred to as a most robust coding level, being decoded first.