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Abstract

There is described an apparatus and method for decoding signals produced by a communication system employing cascading or concatenation of error control codes that contain, for example, short memory convolution codes. A novel inner decoder and method is described which is a modified Viterbi decoder that generates soft decisions by using a subset of the operations performed by a normal, hard decision, Viterbi decoder. Results of simulation tests show that the performance of the novel decoder provides a bit error rate performance that matches the theoretical bit error rate for the various signal to noise ratios, which performance is better than decoders previously available. Several implementations are described and compared.

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