A variant of soft decoding of binary codes

Abstract

A variant of soft decoding of a binary code is considered as treatment, by the least squares method, of the problem of nonlinear estimation of statistical parameters of the information symbols. Estimation of the ratios (logarithms of the ratios) of probabilities of information symbols’ realizations is performed during the respective processing of levels of continuous signals at the output of a discriminator (demodulator) of the received signals with regard for the coding rule. Assessment of the effectiveness of soft decoding may be performed either analytically — based on the covariance matrix of a posteriori probability density of distribution of estimates of information symbols’ parameters, or by the methods of statistical tests.