Importance

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Abstract

A method of encoding a digital signal comprising a sequence of digital words, each comprising a first portion and a second portion, comprises the steps of successively encoding respective first portions using a trellis code to produce a corresponding sequence of trellis-encoded words, using each of the trellis-coded words to select one of a plurality of subcodes of a block code, and using the selected subcode to encode the corresponding second portion of the digital word corresponding sequentially to the trellis-coded word used to select the subcode, thereby providing a sequence of codewords corresponding to the sequence of digital words. After transmission and/or storage, a sequence of codeword vectors comprising the codewords and noise may be decoded by operating upon each of the sequence of codeword vectors using a decoder for each of the subcodes to produce, for each subcode, an estimated decoded second portion and a metric representing the likelihood that the estimated decoded second portion is correct, given that the assumed subcode is correct; using a trellis decoder, operating upon the sequence of likelihood metrics and the associated estimated second portions to provide a sequence of estimated first portions; and associating with each of the estimated first portions the corresponding estimated second portion, thereby providing a sequence of output digital words corresponding to the sequence of digital words originally encoded. The block code may comprise a Kerdock code, the subcodes being cosets of the Reed-Muller code. The decoder may then comprise a Fast Hadamard Transform unit and a Viterbi algorithm decoder.

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First Claim