A Comparative Study of Viterbi and Fano Decoding Algorithm for Convolution CodesKapil Gupta*, P.K.Ghosh*, R.N Piplia** and Anup Dey**** Mody Institute of Technology & Science, Faculty of Engineering & Technology ECE Department, Lakshmangarh, District –Sikar, Rajasthan-332311, India ** Modi Institute of Technology/ECE Department, Kota, Rajasthan, India ***Kalyani Government Engineering College/ECE Department, Kalyani, West Bengal, India. Abstract— In this paper, simulation of Viterbi decoder and Fano decoder for decoding the convolutional codes in AWGN channel is carried out. Graphs are plotted between Viterbi algorithm and Fano algorithm for decoding the convolutional codes of fixed coderate and fixed constraint length. Result shows that performance of Viterbi decoder is better than Fano decoder for the same code rate, constraint length and decoding delay.I.INTRODUCTION In the recent years, there has been an increasing demand for efficient and reliable digital data transmission and storage systems. A major concern of the designer is the control of errors so that reliable reproduction of data can be obtained at the receiver end. The system parameters available to the designer are the transmitted signal power and the channel bandwidth. These two parameters together with the power spectral density of the receiver noise, determine the signal energy per bit-to-noise power spectral density ratio Eb/No. For a fixed Eb/No, the only practical option available for changing data quality from problematic to acceptable level is to use Error Control Coding. Error correction coding is essentially a signal processing technique used to improve the reliability of communication system in digital channels. There are two kinds of for...