Patent Document ID: 8462857
Application ID: 12656281
Patent Flag: 1

Claim One:
1. A method for decoding digital information, comprising: receiving, at a digital receiver utilizing wired communication, a bit-stream signal containing binary information, the bit-stream signal being encoded utilizing a Maximum Run Length Coding scheme combined with a DC-balanced block coding scheme, and the combined coding scheme is an 8B/10B coding scheme; sampling, after said receiving, the bit-stream signal for each binary value at least two different sampling points within an eye pattern associated with the binary value to obtain a hard-bit value for each sampling point; generating a single soft-bit value for each binary value based on the hard-bit value of the binary value; and determining a bit value of the binary value by subjecting soft-bit values to a soft-decision algorithm that generates a reliability number for each binary number based on the generated soft-bit values, the reliability number being an absolute value of a corresponding soft-bit value, wherein the at least two different sampling points within the eye pattern are realized by sampling the received bit-stream signal at a single point in time within the eye pattern in order to obtain a sampled bit-stream signal and comparing the sampled bit-stream signal with two different levels, and wherein DC balancing is accomplished by selecting only 10B symbols as allowed code words that have two or more logical “0” values than logical “1” values.