A trellis is a

graph Graph may refer to: Mathematics *Graph (discrete mathematics), a structure made of vertices and edges **Graph theory, the study of such graphs and their properties *Graph (topology), a topological space resembling a graph in the sense of discret ...

whose nodes are ordered into vertical slices (''time'') with every node at almost every time connected to at least one node at an earlier and at least one node at a later time. The earliest and latest times in the trellis have only one node (hence the "almost" in the preceding sentence). Trellises are used in encoders and decoders for

communication theory Communication theory is a proposed description of communication phenomena, the relationships among them, a storyline describing these relationships, and an argument for these three elements. Communication theory provides a way of talking about a ...

and

encryption In Cryptography law, cryptography, encryption (more specifically, Code, encoding) is the process of transforming information in a way that, ideally, only authorized parties can decode. This process converts the original representation of the inf ...

. They are also the central datatype used in Baum–Welch algorithm or the Viterbi AlgorithmRyan, M. S., & Nudd, G. R. (1993). The viterbi algorithm. University of Warwick, Department of Computer Science. for Hidden Markov Models. The trellis graph is named for its similar appearance to an architectural trellis.

References

See also