Decoding apparatus comprises EX-OR circuit exclusive ORing the Reed-Muller
code and exclusive Ored value of mask symbol candidate pattern and the information
data corresponding to the pattern, first decoder calculating checksum of the EX-OR
circuit output and majority-judging the checksum to decode a part of the second
portion of the information data, second decoder exclusive ORing the EX-OR circuit
output and a product of the part of the second portion and the orthogonal codes
and majority-judging the exclusive OR result to decode a remaining part of the
second portion, Reed-Muller encoder encoding the information data, and minimum
detector detecting the minimum of Euclidean distance between an output from the
Reed-Muller encoder and the Reed-Muller code supplied to the arithmetic operation
unit while a plurality of candidate patterns of the mask symbols are supplied to
the arithmetic operation unit.
