A method of telecommunications includes the steps of receiving an encoded block having a plurality of values, dividing the received encoded block into a plurality of received segments, each received segment comprising at least two of the values, decoding each received segment by providing, for each received segment, a plurality of estimated encoded sequences, each estimated encoded sequence comprising at least two data units, merging estimated encoded sequences for consecutive segments to provide a plurality of candidate sequences, and selecting one of the plurality of candidate sequences by performing a closest fit calculation between the received encoded data block and each of the candidate sequences. The method is suitable for use in software-defined radios.