Brute force channel decoding

An apparatus comprising a decoder, the decoder comprising:

• i) a simililarity measurement calculator configured in use to calculate a similarity measure for substantially each of a plurality of codewords which said received coded bit sequence may possibly represent so as to determine one of the plurality of codewords which most closely matches the received coded bit sequence;
• ii) a bit sequence identifier configured in use to identify an input bit sequence which, when encoded in the same manner as the received coded bit sequence produces said determined codeword;
• and
• iii) an output at which said identified input bit sequence is output so as to represent the decoded received coded bit sequence.

An apparatus comprising:

• a receiver arranged to receive in use data from a High Speed Shared Control Channel (HS-SCCH) corresponding to a High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) downlink, the HS-SCCH data being configured in at least two parts, being a first part and a second part, each part being separately convolutionally encoded from the other part;
• and
• a first decoder arranged to decode the first part of the HS-SCCH data, the decoder comprising:
• a store storing possible codeword values of the first part of the HS-SCCH and associated unencoded values;
• and
• a similarity matching unit arranged in use to compare a received encoded first part data word with the stored codeword values to decode the received encoded first part data word whereby to identify the corresponding unencoded value.