A demapping system and method for demapping symbols into bits, is provided. An embodiment of the system comprises a processor, and a memory that is coupled to the processor. The memory comprises a memory module that comprises a program that finds a hard demapper output d based on a received symbol r; finds a challenger ci for each i, the challenger ci is a challenger of the hard demapper output d, i is an integer whose maximum value is a number of bits of the challenger ci; calculates reliability mi for each i, the reliability mi is the reliability of the hard demapper output d; and calculates soft bit xi for each i, the soft bit xi is calculated based on the reliability mi.