Low Complexity SOVA for Turbo Codes

Recently, trimming Soft-output Viterbi algorithm(T-SOVA) has been proposed to reduce the complexity of SOVA for Turbo codes. In its fi rst stage, a dynamic algorithm, lazy Viterbi algorithm, is used to indicate the minimal metric differences which brings obstacle on hardware implementation. This paper proposes a Viterbi algorithm(VA) based T-SOVA to facilitate hardware implementation. In the first stage of our scheme, a modified VA with regular structure is used to fi nd the maximum likelihood(ML) path and calculate the metric differences. Further, local sorting is introduced to trim the metric differences, which reduces the complexity of trimming operation. Simulation results and complexity analysis show that VA based T-SOVA performs as well as lazy VA based T-SOVA and is easier to be applied to hardware implementation.