| abstract |
Communication decoder employing single trellis to support multiple code rates and/or multiple modulations. A single trellis is employed by the decoder to decode a plurality of encoded symbols. Each of the plurality of encoded symbols is governed by a rate control. A rate control sequence, having a period, is used to decode the plurality of encoded symbols that may be arranged within a frame. Various parameters of the plurality of encoded symbols may vary on a symbol by symbol basis; these parameters may include modulation, constellation, mapping, and/or bandwidth efficiency. For example, various symbols may be encoded differently, yet they may all be decoded using the same trellis. The functionality of this decoder may be implemented within a variety of different decoder embodiments including a trellis code modulation (TCM) decoder, a turbo trellis code modulation (TTCM) decoder, and/or a parallel concatenated turbo code modulation (PC-TCM) decoder. |