Patent · US Expired

Method and apparatus for reduced-complexity viterbi-type sequence detectors

US5291499A · kind A · utility

112Cited by
2References
29Claims
0Family size

Assignee

Inventors

Key dates

Filing dateMar 16, 1992
Grant dateMar 1, 1994
Priority date
Expiry dateMar 16, 2012

Classification

  • Technology area (CPC H)Electricity
  • CPC primaryH04L25/497
  • WIPO fieldAudio-visual technology
  • WIPO sectorElectrical engineering

Abstract

A Viterbi detector is modified to reduce its implementation complexity. A partial-response signal may be viewed as a sequence of expected samples generated from a finite-state-machine model. In a typical Viterbi demodulator implemented using the add, compare, select (ACS) method, each state in the expected sample sequence model is associated with a hardware module to perform the functions of adding new branch error metrics to path error metrics, comparing path error metrics, and selecting the path having the lowest path error metric. In this invention, an ACS module may have two or more sequence-model states dynamically associated with it, such that at some times one sequence-model state is associated with it and at other times another sequence-model state is associated with it. This reduces the number of ACS modules required and also reduces the size/complexity of the demodulator's path memories which must store one path for each ACS module. Groups of sequence-model states may be chosen to share an ACS module without significant loss in performance as compared to the original, unreduced Viterbi demodulator. The invention supports a wide range of sample models by making the expecte…

Source: USPTO / EPO open patent data. Objective bibliographic and citation counts.