On the Distribution of the Output Error Burst Lengths for Viterbi Decoding of Convolutional Codes1

Abstract- The distribution of the output error burst lengths from a Vi te rb i decoder is of particular interest in connection wi th concatenated coding sys-tems, where the inner code is convolutional. From the expurgated, random, and sphere-packing exponents for block codes an upper bound on this distribution for the ensemble of periodically time-varying convo-lutional codes is obtained. Finally, the distribution obtained from simulating time-invariant convolutional codes is presented. I