Soft Bit Viterbi Equalizer Using Partially Collapsed Metrics

摘要

A system and method of decoding data are provided. A particular method includes determining a first partially collapsed metric value for each bit in a symbol transition, where each first partially collapsed metric value is a cumulative metric of starting in a first state and ending in a second state in L transitions. The first partially collapsed metric value is equal to the cumulative metric value for each of the states plus first minimum sum of branch metric values.