Abstract: A device (5) for determining k representative of the magnitude A of an orthogonal component of a Quadrature Amplitude Modulation (QAM) symbol, including: multi-stage binary search circuitry (21) for conducting a multi-stage binary search for the value of A between predetermined maximum and minimum values Amax and Amin, each stage producing a single bit binary output; and integer value construction circuitry (22) for constructing the integer value k by juxtaposing the binary outputs from consecutive stages of the binary search, where W=(Amax?Amin)/n, n equals 2i and i is an integer, Amax is a maximum detectable level of the magnitude A, Amin is a minimum detectable level of the magnitude A, and W is the incremental level between consecutive values of the integer value k