US Patent 7508889 Digital apparatus for soft detection of multi-chip DBPSK signals

A system for implementing the soft decision of a 3-chip differential binary phase shift keying (DBPSK) optical signal using digital components. Pair-wise comparisons of three differentially detected signals are performed and analyzed by digital logic which determines the most likely sequence of data. In a first variant, pairs of adjacent data bits are detected simultaneously, whereas in a second variant, data bits are detected individually. The digital logic can be implemented using conventional logic gates.