Implementation aspects of turbo-decoders for future radio applications

Turbo codes will most likely be employed in future radio systems as a channel coding scheme for high-rate data services. However, turbo decoding is a comparatively complex task. To obtain efficient decoder implementations, the system design space has to be explored on multiple levels. In this paper, we span the system design space for turbo codes and describe a method of exploration, while focusing on the implementation-dependent part. The design decisions taken during exploration are rated regarding complexity, throughput and power consumption. The second part of our paper evaluates sample software and hardware implementations of a 2 Mbit/s turbo decoder