Patent ID: 8300738

Claim:
A power-saving method for Viterbi decoder of a wireless receiver, comprising the steps of: determining at least one numerical value related to a data rate applied by the wireless receiver while receiving packet; and deciding a duty cycle of the Viterbi decoder based on the at least one numerical value, wherein power is provided to the Viterbi decoder based on the duty cycle, wherein the step of determining at least one numerical value is to determine at least one factor among the group of number of bit per subcarrier (N BPSC ), coding rate (R), number of data subcarrier (N SD ), and number of spatial stream (N SS ) applied by the wireless receiver while receiving packet; and the duty cycle is decided based on the at least one factor determined among the group of the number of bit per subcarrier (N BPSC ), the coding rate (R), the number of data subcarrier (N SD ), and number of spatial stream (N SS ); wherein the step of determining at least one numerical value is to calculate a product of at least two of the number of bit per subcarrier (N BPSC ), the coding rate (R), the number of data subcarrier (N SD ), and number of spatial stream (N SS ); and the duty cycle is decided based on the product; and wherein the step of deciding the duty cycle comprises the steps of: calculating and producing a maximum product from all possible products of the number of bit per subcarrier (N BPSC ), the coding rate (R), the number of data subcarrier (N SD ), and the number of spatial stream (N SS ); and calculating a ratio (r) between the product of the at least two of the number of bit per subcarrier (N BPSC ) and the coding rate (R) and the number of data subcarrier (N SD ) and number of spatial stream (N SS ) to the maximum product, and multiplying the ratio (r) with the duty cycle of the wireless receiver, wherein the duty cycle of the Viterbi decoder equals to a product of the ratio (r) and the duty cycle of the wireless receiver.