Equivalence of ML decoding to a continuous optimization problem

Maximum likelihood (ML) and symbolwise maximum aposteriori (MAP) estimation for discrete input sequences play a central role in a number of applications that arise in communications, information and coding theory. Many instances of these problems are proven to be intractable, for example through reduction to NP-complete integer optimization problems. In this work, we prove that the ML estimation of a discrete input sequence (with no assumptions on the encoder/channel used) is equivalent to the solution of a continuous non-convex optimization problem, and that this formulation is closely related to the computation of symbolwise MAP estimates. This equivalence is particularly useful in situations where a function we term the expected likelihood is efficiently computable. In such situations, we give a ML heuristic and show numerics for sequence estimation over the deletion channel.