BiCMOS Circuits for Analog Viterbi Decoders

Analog Viterbi decoders are finding widespread use in class-IV partial-response disk-drive applications. These analog realizations are often used because they are smaller and consume less power than their digital counterparts. However, class-IV signaling allows simplifications during Viterbi detection and thus existing analog decoders have limited applications. The purpose of this paper is to develop efficient analog circuits that can be used for general Viterbi detection. To demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed approach, the analog portions of two analog Viterbi decoders were fabricated in a 0.8m BiCMOS process. With an off-chip digital path memory, operation up to 50 Mb/s is demonstrated. However, simulations indicate that with on-chip digital path memory, speeds on the order of 300 Mb/s can be achieved. The power consumption of the proposed approach is estimated to be 15 mW/state drawn from a single 5-V power supply.