A method of decoding a received data word (r) having been transmitted over a radio communication channel, the corresponding sent data word (m) having been encoded as a code word (c), the method includes:multiplying of the received data word by a parity-check matrix,and if the result of the multiplication is zero: performing an algebraic decoding of the received data word without error correction, otherwise performing an error correction by estimating the transmission error, subtracting the estimated error from the received data word, and performing an algebraic decoding of the result of the subtraction, wherein for estimation of the transmission error is used to identify an approximate location of potential errors and the Viterbi algorithm is only applied for these locations, thus avoiding iterations in error-free areas.