A generic convolutional code Viterbi decoder generator

This paper presents a unified branch metric calculation method and a unified path-metric update scheduling algorithm to realize the Viterbi decoding process for decoding rate=1/2 convolutional codes. By using punctuation, the proposed algorithm can be extended to decode convolutional codes of any rate. With consideration of the tradeoffs between performance and hardware cost, one can also select different architectures toward different design objectives by specifying the number of processors being used, which results a fully-parallel, fully-serial, or a parallel-serial mixed architecture.