A survey on trellis termination alternatives for turbo codes

Numerous strategies and methods for trellis termination of turbo codes have been presented and proposed in the literature. In this paper the most common trellis termination methods are compared and their relative performances are investigated. An important observation is that the performance of a termination method is highly dependent on the particular interleaver choice. Conclusions should thus be drawn for the combination of interleaver and termination method, and not for the termination method alone. Another important conclusion is that the particular choice of termination method is not crucial for the error correcting performance, as long as certain precautions are taken regarding the choice of interleaver.