Analytical methods to determine internal precisions of Viterbi decoders

Finite precisions are used to implement the Viterbi decoders in practice. To determine the internal precisions required, simulations have largely been used and extra number of bits are often used to guarantee that the internal finite precision effects will not affect the overall performance of the Viterbi decoders. With the increase in high bit-rate and low power consumption applications, it has become essential that the Viterbi decoder is designed with the minimum precision required to achieve the desired performance of the decoder. This paper presents analytical methods to determine the precision required to implement the decoders for convolutional and trellis codes of practical interest