A low-power VLSI implementation for variable length decoder in MPEG-1 Layer III

Abstract

MPEG Layer III (MP3) audio coding algorithm is a widely used audio coding standard. It involves several complex coding techniques and is therefore difficult to create an efficient architecture design. The variable length decoding (VLD) e.g. Huffman decoding, is an important part of MP3, which needs great amount of search and memory access operations. In this paper a data driven variable length decoding algorithm is presented, which exploits the signal statistics of variable length codes to reduce power and a two-level table lookup method is presented. The decoder was designed based on simplicity and low-cost, low power consumption while retaining the high efficiency requirements. The total power saving is about 67%.