Multistandard FEC Decoders for Wireless Devices

One of the key features of a modern mobile terminal is the simultaneous support of multiple/different transmission standards. Most of these standards include forward error correction decoding functionality. In this overview paper we review the possibilities for combinations of common decoder families (Reed-Solomon, Viterbi, Turbo and low-density parity check) within one hardware platform. We show, that although specific combinations may result in silicon area savings, in general case the reuse possibilities are limited to much less than 20% of the overall decoder area.