Communications system and methods employing selective recursive decording

An apparatus for decoding a communications signal which represents a source sequence encoded according to respective first and second error correction codes which produce respective first and second encoded sequences which are multiplexed to produce the communications signal, the apparatus comprising:

• communications signal processing means for processing the communications signal to produce first and second received sequences of symbols corresponding to the first and second encoded sequences, respectively;
• and
• selective recursive decoding means, responsive to said communications signal processing means, for selectively recursively decoding the first and second received sequences according to the respective first and second codes augmented by previous estimates of a symbol of the source sequence to repeatedly produce revised estimates of the symbol until a revised estimate satisfying a predetermined reliability criterion is obtained, wherein said selective recursive decoding means comprises means for first decoding one of the first and second received sequences having a preferred signal characteristic associated therewith.

A method of decoding a communications signal which represents a source sequence encoded according to respective first and second error correction codes which produce respective first and second encoded sequences which are multiplexed to produce the communications signal, the method comprising the steps of:

• processing the communications signal to produce first and second received sequences of symbols corresponding to the first and second encoded sequences, respectively;
• selectively recursively decoding the first and second received sequences according to the respective error correction codes augmented by previous estimates of a symbol of the source sequence to repeatedly produce revised estimates of the symbol until an estimate satisfying a predetermined reliability criteria is obtained, wherein said step of selectively recursively decoding comprises nonrecursively decoding at least one of the first and second received sequences according to the respective error correction code to produce estimates of a first group of symbols in the source sequence and recursively decoding the first and second received sequences to produce estimates of a second group of symbols of the source sequence.

A method of decoding a communications signal which representing an error detection encoded source sequence that is encoded according to respective first and second error correction codes which produce respective first and second encoded sequences which are multiplexed to produce the communications signal, the method comprising the steps of:

• processing the communications signal to produce first and second received sequences of symbols corresponding to the first and second encoded sequences, respectively
• selectively recursively decoding the first and second received sequences according to the respective error correction codes augmented by previous estimates of a symbol of the error detection encoded source sequence to repeatedly produce revised estimates of the symbol until an estimate satisfying a predetermined reliability criterion is obtained, wherein said step of selectively recursively decoding comprises
• decoding an estimate of the symbol of the error detection encoded source sequence according to the error detection code to produce the reliability metric for the estimate.

A method of decoding a communications signal which represents a source sequence encoded according to respective first and second error correction codes which produce respective first and second encoded sequences which are multiplexed to produce the communications signal, the method comprising the steps of:

• processing the communications signal to produce first and second received sequences of symbols corresponding to the first and second encoded sequences, respectively;
• and
• selectively recursively decoding the first and second received sequences according to the respective first and second codes augmented by previous estimates of a symbol of the source sequence to repeatedly produce revised estimates of the symbol until a revised estimate satisfying a predetermined reliability criterion is obtained, wherein said step of selectively recursively decoding comprises first decoding one of the first and second received sequences having a preferred signal characteristic associated therewith.