Methods and systems for decoding a data signal based on the generation of a decoding tree

A computer program product for decoding a received data signal, the computer program product comprising:

• a non-transitory computer readable storage medium;
• and
• instructions stored on the non-transitory computer readable storage medium that, when executed by a processor, cause the processor to:
• iteratively construct a decoding tree, each node of said decoding tree corresponding to a component of a symbol of said data signal, and being associated with a metric, wherein said step of iteratively constructing the decoding tree implements at least one iteration of the following steps, for a current node of the tree stored in the top of a stack:
• generating a reference child node (si) of said current node from said vector representing the received data signal,
• from the reference child node (si), generating a first neighbor child node by subtracting a positive integer parameter (p) from the value of the reference node (si), and a second neighbor child node by adding said positive integer parameter (p) to the value of the reference child node (si);
• storing in said stack at most three child nodes among the reference child node and said first and second neighbor child nodes, each child node being stored in the stack in association with node information comprising a predetermined metric, the nodes in the stack being ordered by increasing values of metrics;
• removing the current node from said stack;
• selecting the top node of said stack as the new current node;
• wherein the value of each node in the tree corresponds to the component of a symbol belonging to a given constellation having a predefined range between a minimum threshold and a maximum threshold, each step of generating a child node comprising setting the value of the child node based on said maximum and minimum thresholds,
• wherein said instructions further cause the processor to determine an estimation of said data signal from the node information stored in said stack.

A device for decoding a received data signal, wherein the device comprises:

• at least one processor;
• and
• a memory coupled to the at least one processor and including instructions that, when executed by the at least one processor, cause the device to iteratively construct a decoding tree, each node of said decoding tree corresponding to a component of a symbol of said data signal, and being associated with a metric, wherein said step of iteratively constructing the decoding tree implements at least one iteration of the following steps, for a current node of the tree stored in the top of a stack:
• generating a reference child node (si) of said current node from said vector representing the received data signal,
• from the reference child node (si), generating a first neighbor child node by subtracting a positive integer parameter (p) from the value of the reference node (si), and a second neighbor child node by adding said positive integer parameter (p) to the value of the reference child node (si);
• storing in said stack at most three child nodes among the reference child node and said first and second neighbor child nodes, each child node being stored in the stack in association with node information comprising a predetermined metric, the nodes in the stack being ordered by increasing values of metrics;
• removing the current node from said stack;
• selecting the top node of said stack as the new current node;
• wherein the value of each node in the tree corresponds to the component of a symbol belonging to a given constellation having a predefined range between a minimum threshold and a maximum threshold, each step of generating a child node comprising setting the value of the child node based on said maximum and minimum thresholds,
• wherein said instructions, when executed by at least one processor, further cause the device to determine an estimation of said data signal from the node information stored in said stack.