A soft-in-soft-out (SISO) decoder for a general block code includes a source bit generator which generates k guessed source bits; a channel encoder which maps the k guessed source bits to an n-bit channel codeword; a QAM symbol mapper which generates a locally generated symbol sequence comprising m consecutive QAM symbols based on the n-bit channel codeword; a correlator which receives a symbol sequence, a channel state information sequence, and the locally generated symbol sequence to calculate a correlation associated with the received symbol sequence based on the received symbol sequence, the channel state information sequence, and the locally generated symbol sequence; and a log-likelihood ratio calculator which is connected to the source bit generator and the correlator to thereby calculate the required log-likelihood ratios associated with all coded bits corresponding to the received symbol sequence.