Soft-decision decoding

Soft-decision decoding is a way of getting the most accurate possible result from a piece of information that is not perfect. It works like this: A computer receives a jumbled signal – like a mixed-up song on the radio – and it tries to use math to re-assemble the signal. Instead of just trying one way to piece it back together, the computer looks at all the different ways it can be arranged and picks the one that makes the most sense. That’s soft-decision decoding.