The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Mar. 11, 2003
Filed:
Aug. 19, 1998
Applicant:
Inventor:
Tadaaki Yoshinaka, Kanagawa, JP;
Assignee:
Sony Corporation, Tokyo, JP;
Attorney:
Primary Examiner:
Int. Cl.
CPC ...
H04N 5/91 ;
U.S. Cl.
CPC ...
H04N 5/91 ;
Abstract
A viterbi decoder employed in a digital-signal playback apparatus provided by the present invention such as a video tape recorder and an optical-disc apparatus executes the steps of carrying out tentative discrimination on an input signal, equalizing the input signal in accordance with a result of the tentative discrimination, limiting the number of state transitions of the equalized signal and forming a judgment to select a most probable state transition among the limited number of state transitions. As a result, the viterbi decoder is suited for viterbi decoding and allows the viterbi decoding to be carried out on a digital signal by using a simple configuration.