1. A wireless communication device including a memory system for use in trellis-based decoding of convolutionally encoded data bits, the memory system comprising: means for receiving a plurality of indices for an encoded set of data bits, at least one index of said plurality of indices being associated with a present state and denoting a predecessor state; means for storing said plurality of indices in one or more arrays, said means for storing including a plurality of elements arranged into at least rows and columns of elements wherein a row is associated with one of said arrays and a column is associated with a present state, an element having an index stored therein thereby denoting both a present state in its associated array and a predecessor state in an immediately preceding array; and means for retrieving an original unencoded set of data bits by tracing back a path followed by an encoding procedure that produced the encoded set of data bits, said tracing back being performed over a plurality of consecutive arrays received for which an end state is encountered.