H03M 13/4146

Sequence estimation, i.e. using statistical methods for the reconstruction of the original codes using the Viterbi algorithm or Viterbi processors {soft-output Viterbi algorithm based decoding, i.e. Viterbi decoding with weighted decisions soft-output Viterbi decoding according to Battail and Hagenauer in which the soft-output is determined using path metric differences along the maximum-likelihood path, i.e. "SOVA" decoding}