Analysis of turbo decoders for UMTS systems

This article introduces channel coding in the 3G mobile communication system. The study relates initially to the conventional coding and is followed by a study on turbo code. A comparative study is carried out between convolutional coding and turbo coding and between different iterative coding algorithms (turbo coding). The study puts in evidence the contribution of the soft decoding methods (soft decision decoding) compared to the hard methods of decoding (hard decision coding), in the occurrence of the Viterbi algorithm. The AWGN channel (12 kbps) and the standard 3GPP (64 kbps) are thus utilised for the conventional and turbo coding respectively.