METHOD AND ELECTRONIC ARCHITECTURE FOR OPTIMAL SOVA DETECTION, BASED ON TRACING FUSION POINTS

摘要

The invention provides an alternative to current Soft Output Viterbi Algorithm (SOVA) decoding schemes, which does not trace the surviving paths through the trellis diagram, but first finds isolated points at which said paths converge. The points at which the paths converge are known as fusion points. Given that this is the point at which the paths converge, the fusion points in reality form part of the most likely path in the trellis diagram. Said fusion points are subsequently used to enable another unit to update the reliability of the bits.