Equalization techniques using viterbi algorithms in software-defined radio systems

A software-defined radio (SDR) system comprising:

• a reconfigurable radio-frequency (RF) transceiver portion to operate under a plurality of wireless communication standards;
• and
• a reconfigurable baseband processing portion associated with the RF transceiver portion, the reconfigurable baseband processing portion including a Viterbi algorithm comprising:
• a reconfigurable data path including:
• i) a reconfigurable branch metric calculation block correlating information from an output of a matched filter and channel parameters from a channel estimation circuit;
• and
• ii) a reconfigurable add-compare-select and path metric calculation block;
• and
• a programmable finite state machine to control the reconfigurable data path, wherein the programmable finite state machine executes a plurality of context-related instructions associated with the Viterbi algorithm.

A method of channel equalization using a Viterbi algorithm comprising:

• correlating information from an output of a matched filter and channel parameters from a channel estimation circuit;
• passing the correlated information to a reconfigurable data path comprising:
• i) a reconfigurable branch metric calculation block;
• and
• ii) a reconfigurable add-compare-select and path metric calculation block;
• and
• controlling the reconfigurable data path with a programmable finite state machine, wherein the programmable finite state machine executes a plurality of context-related instructions associated with the Viterbi algorithm.