As turbo decoding is a highly memory-intensive algorithm consuming large power, a major issue to be solved in practical implementation is to reduce power consumption. This paper presents an efficient reverse calculation method to lower the power consumption by reducing the number of memory accesses required in turbo decoding. The reverse calculation method is proposed for the Max-log-MAP algorithm, and it is combined with a scaling technique to achieve a new decoding algorithm, called hybrid log-MAP, that results in a similar BER performance to the log-MAP algorithm. For the W-CDMA standard, experimental results show that 80% of memory accesses are reduced through the proposed reverse calculation method. A hybrid log-MAP turbo decoder based on the proposed reverse calculation reduces power consumption and memory size by 34.4% and 39.2%, respectively.

Several implementation methods for a MAP decoder are proposed in this paper. Using a novel pipeline structured time-shared process, the authors are able to efficiently overcome the restrictions imposed by the recursion process on state metrics, and the complexity of the MAP decoder can be reduced to a level on the order of a SOVA (Soft Output Viterbi Algorithm) decoder. In addition, the authors propose an efficient controller structure that can be used for variable frame-size systems such as cdma-2000. The MAP decoder using a block-wise algorithm designed here was implemented in only one 20,000 gate circuit. It was validated by VHDL, which was compared with the results of the initial simulation (C programs). The decoder demonstrated a 300 kbps decoding processing ability with 8 iterations on a FPGA circuit, with a deviation only about 0.1-0.2 dB greater than that for an ideal MAP decoder, even when all hardware environments are considered.