Method and apparatus to detect a signal received from a channel signal

Abstract

The present invention relates to an apparatus for detecting a signal received from a channel signal and for transforming this signal into a binary code sequence. More particularly the invention refers to a signal processing apparatus, which can perform a maximum likelihood detection of the reproduced data from an optical disk. It is an object of the invention to propose a maximum likelihood detector having reduced complexity. According to the invention a method to detect a signal (EBS) received from a channel signal (HF), comprises the steps of digitizing the signal received from the channel, equalizing the digitized signal (Ak), generating branch metrics (b_mp, b_pm) from the equalized signal (Bk), determining the minimum (b_ml) of the generated branch metrics (b_mp, b_pm), determining a merge (m−, m+, m0) from the minimum (b_ml), and generating a bitstream signal from the succession of merges (m−, m+, m0).

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.