Viterbi Decoding of Convolutional Codes in Symmetric α -Stable Noise

Algorithms developed with a Gaussian noise assumption perform poorly in impulsive noise, such as that described by the symmetric alpha-stable (SalphaS) distribution. We investigate the performance of antipodal signaling and Viterbi decoding of convolutional codes in SalphaS noise. We demonstrate that the p-norm branch metric is robust in SalphaS noise.