Journal of the Korea Institute of Information and Communication Engineering (한국정보통신학회논문지)

The Korea Institute of Information and Commucation Engineering (한국정보통신학회)
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Design of a High Performance Two-Step SOVA Decoder

고성능 Two-Step SOVA 복호기 설계

  • 전덕수 (강릉대학교 정보전자공학부)
  • Published : 2003.06.01
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Abstract

A new two-step soft-output Viterbi algorithm (SOVA) decoder architecture is presented. A significant reduction in the decoding latency can be achieved through the use of the dual-port RAM in the survivor memory structure of the trace-back unit. The system complexity can be lowered due to the determination of the absolute value of the path metric differences inside the add-compare-select (ACS) unit. The proposed SOVA architecture was verified successfully by the functional simulation of Verilog HDL modeling and the FPGA prototyping. The SOVA decoder achieves a data rate very close to that of the conventional Viterbi Algorithm (VA) decoder and the resource consumption of the realized SOVA decoder is only one and a half times larger than that of the conventional VA decoder.

새로운 two-step SOVA 복호기 구조가 제안된다. Trace-back단의 survivor memory에 dual-port RAM 개념이 적용되어, 기존 two-step SOVA 방식에 비해서 복호 지연의 현격한 감소가 가능해진다. Path metric 차이의 절대값이 ACS단 내부에서 계산됨으로써, 기존 two-step SOVA 방식에 비해 시스템의 복잡성이 크게 줄어든다. 제안된 SOVA 복호기 구조는 verilog HDL로 기술되어 동작 시뮬레이션을 거쳐 구조의 타당성이 검증되었으며, FPGA로 구현되었다. 구현된 SOVA복호기는 종래의 비터비 복호기에 가까운 데이터 처리율을 보여주었으며, 구현에 사용된 FPGA 소자 자원은 종래의 비터비 복호기의 약 1.5배 정도이다.

Keywords

References

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