Scalable Reconfigurable Channel Decoder Architecture for Future Wireless Handsets

The current trend in the consumer devices and communication service provider market is the integration of different communication standards within a single device (e.g. GSM phone with Bluetooth, WLAN and infrared interface) requiring tight integration of mobile broadcast, networking and cellular technologies within one product. Channel decoder is traditionally one of the most computationally intensive building block within digital receivers. The aim of this paper is to investigate the feasibility of a programmable channel decoder that can be dynamically reconfigured for decoding turbo and convolutionally encoded streams from various wireless standards. The architecture options are presented and the area costs and flexibility compared between the options. The resulting decoder architecture supports hardware resource sharing and reconfiguration between different standards and decoders and is more efficient in terms of silicon area than independent implementation of every decoder on the same IC.