The Viterbi Algorithm Demystified - USC Viterbi School of Engineering

Fifty years ago, I published a paper, "Error bounds for convolutional codes and an asymptotically optimum decoding algorithm," on the important class of convolutional codes, which is particularly effective in preventing errors in digital communication over wireless and other transmission media. The algorithm, which became labeled with my name, was a crucial step in establishing the merits as well as evaluating the performance of these codes. The paper was read and understood by only a few specialists. In the next few years, clarity was provided by two papers, the first by a colleague, G.D. Forney Jr., who introduced the trellis model, and the second by myself based on a state diagram, or Markov model. A.A. Markov was a Russian mathematician who proposed and analyzed a statistical concept regarding the relationship between terms of a sequence or, more generally, of successive events; specifically, that each term (or string of terms) or event is statistically dependent only on the previous one.