The invention relates to a method and a circuit arrangement for deciding a symbol upon the reception of a signal including or coupled with a quadrature signal pair, wherein the decision is made by means of an analysis of the metric of at least one reception point to at least one nominal point in a complex coordinate space, and the metric is analyzed in the non-Cartesian or not exclusively Cartesian complex coordinate space. The decision is made after the analysis, and during the decision process, a second most probable nominal point and a reliability of the decision are determined.