Survivor Path Processing in Viterbi Decoders Using Register Exchange and Traceforward

This brief proposes a new class of hybrid VLSI architectures for survivor path processing to be used in Viterbi decoders. The architecture combines the benefits of register exchange and traceforward algorithms, that is, low storage requirement and latency versus implementation efficiency. Based on a structural comparison, it becomes evident that the architecture can be efficiently applied to codes with a larger number of states where traceback-based architectures, which increase latency, are usually dominant.