The Altera® 3GPP LTE Turbo Reference Design demonstrates using Turbo codes for encoding with trellis termination support, and forward error correction (FEC) decoding with early termination support. The reference design is suitable for 3GPP long term evolution (LTE) channel card or baseband modem applications compatible with the 3GPP Technical Specification (reference 1).
Turbo codes were first proposed by Berrou (and others) in 1993 (reference 2). Since its introduction, turbo code has become the coding technique of choice in many communication and storage systems due to its near Shannon limit error correction capability. These applications include 3GPP, consultative committee for space application (CCSDS) telemetry channel coding, worldwide interoperability for microwave access (WiMAX), and 3GPP LTE, which require throughputs in the range from two to several hundred Mbps.