Teachings presented herein offer improved symbol block detection by including a decoder unit in a demodulation system. Utilizing a decoder unit in a demodulation system can significantly enhance symbol block detection because the decoder can produce bit likelihood values (soft bit values), and these bit likelihood values can be used to construct a set of candidate symbol values. Advantageously, this set of candidate symbol values is more likely to contain the actually transmitted symbol(s) than if the decoder unit was not used in the demodulation system.