There is provided a decoder for sequentially decoding a data signal received through a transmission channel in a communication system, said data signal carrying transmitted symbols, said decoder comprising a symbol estimation unit (301) configured to determine estimated symbols representative of the transmitted symbols carried by the received signal from information stored in a stack, said symbol estimation unit (301) being configured to iteratively fill the stack by expanding child nodes of a selected node of a decoding tree comprising a plurality of nodes, each node of the decoding tree corresponding to a candidate component of a symbol of said data signal and each node being assigned a metric, the stack being filled at each iteration with a set of expanded child nodes and being ordered by increasing values of the metrics assigned to the nodes, the selected node for each iteration corresponding to the node being assigned the lowest metric in the stack, the decoder comprising a metric determination unit (302) configured to determine an initial metric for each child node of said set of expanded child nodes, wherein the decoder further comprises a modified metric calculation unit (303) configured to calculate a modified metric for at least one of the expanded child nodes from the metric associated with said expanded child node and a weighting coefficient, said weighting coefficient being a function of the level of said node in the decoding tree, the decoder assigning said modified metric to said at least one of the expanded child nodes.