Error correction of balanced codeword sequence

A method for recoding an input sequence of words, including assigning a respective bit-grade such as a reliability valve depending on sampling phases to at least one of the bits in a first word in the input sequence, deriving candidate words ( 161 , W 1 , W 2 ) from the first word in response to the respective bit-grade, and inserting one of the candidate words into each of a plurality of candidate sequences (T 1 , T 2 , T 3 ), so that each of the candidate sequences contains one of the candidate words. The method further includes adding subsequent words (Wx(t), Wx(t-1), . . . ) to the candidate sequences, the subsequent words consisting of a further candidate word derived from a further word in the input sequence, computing respective sequence parameters for the candidate sequences, based on a relation between the candidate words and the subsequent words in the candidate sequences involving the digital sum variation, selecting one of die candidate sequences (T 1 ) in response to the sequence parameters, and outputting one of the candidate words contained in the selected candidate sequence. For gigabit ethernet using a 8b/10b coding scheme.