Electrical Engineering Department

Information Theory and Coding

ENEE532

Viterbi Decoder

By:
Banan Saleh

Instructor: Dr. Wael Hashlamoun

Section #1
21/6/2014


I


Table Of contents
Table of Figures ...........................................................................................................................II
Introduction .................................................................................................................................1
Decision types of Viterbi Decoder................................................................................................1
Applications of Viterbi Decoder or areas like.............................................................................2
Simulation and Results..................................................................................................................2
Blocks description..........................................................................................................................3

















II

Table of Figures
Figure1: General Block Diagram of Decoder..................................................................................1
Figure 1: Block Diagram of Modulation and Demodulation using MATLAB/SIMULINK...........2
Figure 2: Input and Viterbi Decoder Output Signals......................................................................3
Figure 3: Data( input and output) Viterbi .......................................................................................4













1



Viterbi Decoder
Introduction
It uses the Viterbi algorithm for decoding a bit stream that has been encoded using a
convolutional code. Viterbi algorithm uses the maximum likelihood decoding. There are three
main components to the Viterbi decoding algorithm, are:
1) Branch Metric computation (BMC)
2) Add-Compare and Select (ACS)
3) Traceback decoding (TBD)

Figure 4: General Block Diagram of Decoder

Decision types of Viterbi Decoder:
1) Un-quantized decision
2) Hard decision
3) Soft decision
Applications of Viterbi Decoder or areas like:
1) Radio and satellite communication
2) Trellis-coded modulation (TCM)
3) Computer storage devices such as hard disk drives
2

4) Automatic speech recognition

Simulation and Results :
The next figure shows a small simulation of this decoder by MATLAB/SIMULINK:


The project is divided into two main parts , as the whole communication system divided into
modulation ( transmitter) and demodulation ( receiver ).
The Binary Phase Shift keying is used for this technique. And more over Viterbi Decoder is
used to decode the input of the receiver .

Blocks description:
Error rate calculation (bit error rate): it calculates the error rate as a running statistic by
dividing the total number of unequal pairs of data elements by the total number of input data
elements from one source.
Viterbi decoder: it decodes input symbols to produce binary output symbols. This block can
process several symbols at a time for faster performance.
Convolutional encoder: it encodes a sequence of binary input vectors to produce a sequence
of binary output vectors.
Figure 5: Block Diagram of Modulation and Demodulation using MATLAB/SIMULINK
3

AWGN channel: adds a white Gaussian noise to a real or complex input signal( for real
communication system ) .
Data type conversion: it converts an input signal of any SIMULINK data type to the data
type and scaling specify for the output data type.
In order to have clear plot, I just limited the input and the out into 12 bit at all the block of
Simulink Blocks

Results :












Figure 6: Input and Viterbi Decoder Output Signals
4


Figure 7: Data( input and output) Viterbi