A low-power group-based VLD design

Abstract

In this paper, a low power variable length code decoder with group-based scheme is proposed. It can save at most 70% power dissipation while maintaining the same throughput rate as the conventional one. This proposal mainly consists of look-up table (LUT) partitioning and group-based memory storing, where the former is used to reduce the power wasted on looking-up unnecessary code-words due to a large LUT, especially those code-words with low probability; the latter is used to reduce the storage space of VLC tables and maintain the flexibility of our hardware decoder.