Performance versus complexity of Viterbi and sequential decoding.

Performance versus complexity is compared for the Viterbi maximum likelihood decoder and the sequential decoder of convolutional codes for the additive white Gaussian noise memoryless channel. It is found that sequential decoders outperform Viterbi decoders at low data rates (less than 100 kbps) for the same complexity. However, Viterbi decoders are less complex than sequential decoders at high data rates (10 Mbps and greater) for the same performance.