Optimization and implementation of a Viterbi decoder under flexibility constraints

Summary, in English

This paper discusses the impact of flexibility when designing a Viterbi decoder for both convolutional and TCM codes. Different trade-offs have to be considered in choosing the right architecture for the processing blocks and the resulting hardware penalty is evaluated. We study the impact of symbol quantization that degrades performance and affects the wordlength of the rate-flexible trellis datapath. A radix-2-based architecture for this datapath relaxes the hardware requirements on the branch metric and survivor path blocks substantially. The cost of flexibility in terms of cell area and power consumption is explored by an investigation of synthesized designs that provide different transmission rates. Two designs are fabricated in a digital 0.13- $mu{hbox {m}}$ CMOS process. Based on post-layout simulations, a symbol baud rate of 168 Mbaud/s is achieved in TCM mode, equivalent to a maximum throughput of 840 Mbit/s using a 64-QAM constellation.

• Author: Matthias Kamuf; Viktor Öwall; John B Anderson
• Department/s: Department of Electrical and Information Technology
• Publishing year: 2008
• Language: English
• Pages: 2411-2422
• Publication/Series: IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems Part 1: Regular Papers
• Volume: 55
• Issue: 8
• Full text: - 1 MB; Download statistics
• Links: http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/TCSI.2008.918148
• Document type: Journal article
• Publisher: IEEE - Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.
• Topic: Electrical Engineering, Electronic Engineering, Information Engineering
• Status: Published
• Project: Digital ASIC: Flexible Coding and Decoding for Wireless Personal Area Networks
• Research group: Elektronikkonstruktion; Digital ASIC; Telecommunication Theory
• ISBN/ISSN/Other: ISSN: 1549-8328