An apparatus and method for recovering data transmitted in a wireless communication system is claim. A plurality of signal points, the signal point comprising a plurality of modulation symbols from a plurality of coded bits, is received (604). A first subset of signal points for which a bit is equal to a first value and a second subset of signal points for which the bit is equal to a second value is determined (608). The first and second subset are signal points from an expanded signal constelation. The probability of that the bit is equal to the first value or the second value is determined as a function of the received signal point (612). A soft decision symbol may then be determined, based on the probability that the bit is equal to the first value or the second value. The soft decision symbols may be represented as log likelihood ratios (616).