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Interpolation Basics

Neil Robertson August 20, 201915 comments

This article covers interpolation basics, and provides a numerical example of interpolation of a time signal.  Figure 1 illustrates what we mean by interpolation.  The top plot shows a continuous time signal, and the middle plot shows a sampled version with sample time Ts.  The goal of interpolation is to increase the sample rate such that the new (interpolated) sample values are close to the values of the continuous signal at the sample times [1].  For example, if...


A Two Bin Solution

Cedron Dawg July 12, 2019
Introduction

This is an article to hopefully give a better understanding of the Discrete Fourier Transform (DFT) by showing an implementation of how the parameters of a real pure tone can be calculated from just two DFT bin values. The equations from previous articles are used in tandem to first calculate the frequency, and then calculate the amplitude and phase of the tone. The approach works best when the tone is between the two DFT bins in terms of frequency.

The Coding...

Reduced-Delay IIR Filters

Rick Lyons July 4, 201919 comments

This blog gives the results of a preliminary investigation of reduced-delay (reduced group delay) IIR filters based on my understanding of the concepts presented in a recent interesting blog by Steve Maslen [1].

Development of a Reduced-Delay 2nd-Order IIR Filter

Maslen's development of a reduced-delay 2nd-order IIR filter begins with a traditional prototype filter, HTrad, shown in Figure 1(a). The first modification to the prototype filter is to extract the b0 feedforward coefficient...


Part 11. Using -ve Latency DSP to Cancel Unwanted Delays in Sampled-Data Filters/Controllers

Steve Maslen June 18, 201918 comments
This final article in the series will look at -ve latency DSP and how it can be used to cancel the unwanted delays in sampled-data systems due to such factors as Nyquist filtering, ADC acquisition, DSP/FPGA algorithm computation time, DAC reconstruction and circuit propagation delays.

Some applications demand zero-latency or zero unwanted latency signal processing. Negative latency DSP may sound like the stuff of science fiction or broken physics but the arrangement as...


A Direct Digital Synthesizer with Arbitrary Modulus

Neil Robertson June 3, 20195 comments

Suppose you have a system with a 10 MHz sample clock, and you want to generate a sampled sinewave at any frequency below 5 MHz on 500 kHz spacing; i.e., 0.5, 1.0, 1.5, … MHz.  In other words, f = k*fs/20, where k is an integer and fs is sample frequency.  This article shows how to do this using a simple Direct Digital Synthesizer (DDS) with a look-up table that is at most 20 entries long.   We’ll also demonstrate a Quadrature-output DDS.  A note on...


Somewhat Off Topic: Deciphering Transistor Terminology

Rick Lyons May 28, 20194 comments

I recently learned something mildly interesting about transistors, so I thought I'd share my new knowledge with you folks. Figure 1 shows a p-n-p transistor comprising a small block of n-type semiconductor sandwiched between two blocks of p-type semiconductor.

The terminology of "emitter" and "collector" seems appropriate, but did you ever wonder why the semiconductor block in the center is called the "base"? The word base seems inappropriate because the definition of the word base is:...


Reducing IIR Filter Computational Workload

Rick Lyons May 24, 20195 comments

This blog describes a straightforward method to significantly reduce the number of necessary multiplies per input sample of traditional IIR lowpass and highpass digital filters.

Reducing IIR Filter Computations Using Dual-Path Allpass Filters

We can improve the computational speed of a lowpass or highpass IIR filter by converting that filter into a dual-path filter consisting of allpass filters as shown in Figure 1.

...

A Lesson In Engineering Humility

Rick Lyons May 20, 20199 comments

Let's assume you were given the task to design and build the 12-channel telephone transmission system shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1

At a rate of 8000 samples/second, each telephone's audio signal is sampled and converted to a 7-bit binary sequence of pulses. The analog signals at Figure 1's nodes A, B, and C are presented in Figure 2.

Figure 2

I'm convinced that some of you subscribers to this dsprelated.com web site could accomplish such a design & build task....

IIR Bandpass Filters Using Cascaded Biquads

Neil Robertson April 20, 201911 comments

In an earlier post [1], we implemented lowpass IIR filters using a cascade of second-order IIR filters, or biquads.  

This post provides a Matlab function to do the same for Butterworth bandpass IIR filters.  Compared to conventional implementations, bandpass filters based on biquads are less sensitive to coefficient quantization [2].  This becomes important when designing narrowband filters.

A biquad section block diagram using the Direct Form II structure [3,4] is...


Controlling a DSP Network's Gain: A Note For DSP Beginners

Rick Lyons March 29, 201922 comments

This blog briefly discusses a topic well-known to experienced DSP practitioners but may not be so well-known to DSP beginners. The topic is the proper way to control a digital network's gain. Digital Network Gain Control Figure 1 shows a collection of networks I've seen, in the literature of DSP, where strict gain control is implemented.

              FIGURE 1. Examples of digital networks whose initial operations are input signal...


An Efficient Linear Interpolation Scheme

Rick Lyons December 27, 201725 comments

This blog presents a computationally-efficient linear interpolation trick that requires at most one multiply per output sample.

Background: Linear Interpolation

Looking at Figure 1(a) let's assume we have two points, [x(0),y(0)] and [x(1),y(1)], and we want to compute the value y, on the line joining those two points, associated with the value x. 

       Figure 1: Linear interpolation: given x, x(0), x(1), y(0), and y(1), compute the value of y. ...


Design IIR Highpass Filters

Neil Robertson February 3, 20182 comments

This post is the fourth in a series of tutorials on IIR Butterworth filter design.  So far we covered lowpass [1], bandpass [2], and band-reject [3] filters; now we’ll design highpass filters.  The general approach, as before, has six steps:

Find the poles of a lowpass analog prototype filter with Ωc = 1 rad/s. Given the -3 dB frequency of the digital highpass filter, find the corresponding frequency of the analog highpass filter (pre-warping). Transform the...

Padé Delay is Okay Today

Jason Sachs March 1, 20166 comments

This article is going to be somewhat different in that I’m not really writing it for the typical embedded systems engineer. Rather it’s kind of a specialized topic, so don’t be surprised if you get bored and move on to something else. That’s fine by me.

Anyway, let’s just jump ahead to the punchline. Here’s a numerical simulation of a step response to a \( p=126, q=130 \) Padé approximation of a time delay:

Impressed? Maybe you should be. This...


Peak to Average Power Ratio and CCDF

Neil Robertson May 17, 20164 comments

Peak to Average Power Ratio (PAPR) is often used to characterize digitally modulated signals.  One example application is setting the level of the signal in a digital modulator.  Knowing PAPR allows setting the average power to a level that is just low enough to minimize clipping.

However, for a random signal, PAPR is a statistical quantity.  We have to ask, what is the probability of a given peak power?  Then we can decide where to set the average...


TCP/IP interface (Matlab/Octave)

Markus Nentwig June 17, 201210 comments

Communicate with measurement instruments via Ethernet (no-toolbox-Matlab or Octave)

Purpose

Measurement automation is digital signal processing in a wider sense: Getting a digital signal from an analog world usually involves some measurement instruments, for example a spectrum analyzer. Modern instruments, and also many off-the-shelf prototyping boards such as FPGA cards [1] or microcontrollers [2] are able to communicate via Ethernet. Here, I provide some basic mex-functions (compiled C...


Sinusoidal Frequency Estimation Based on Time-Domain Samples

Rick Lyons April 20, 201719 comments

The topic of estimating a noise-free real or complex sinusoid's frequency, based on fast Fourier transform (FFT) samples, has been presented in recent blogs here on dsprelated.com. For completeness, it's worth knowing that simple frequency estimation algorithms exist that do not require FFTs to be performed . Below I present three frequency estimation algorithms that use time-domain samples, and illustrate a very important principle regarding so called "exact"...


A Simplified Matlab Function for Power Spectral Density

Neil Robertson March 3, 20204 comments

In an earlier post [1], I showed how to compute power spectral density (PSD) of a discrete-time signal using the Matlab function pwelch [2].  Pwelch is a useful function because it gives the correct output, and it has the option to average multiple Discrete Fourier Transforms (DFTs).  However, a typical function call has five arguments, and it can be hard to remember how to set them all and how they default.

In this post, I create a simplified PSD function by putting a...


Free Goodies from Embedded World - What to Do Next?

Stephane Boucher March 6, 20194 comments

I told you I would go on a hunt for free stuff at Embedded World in order to build a bundle for someone to win.


IIR Bandpass Filters Using Cascaded Biquads

Neil Robertson April 20, 201911 comments

In an earlier post [1], we implemented lowpass IIR filters using a cascade of second-order IIR filters, or biquads.  

This post provides a Matlab function to do the same for Butterworth bandpass IIR filters.  Compared to conventional implementations, bandpass filters based on biquads are less sensitive to coefficient quantization [2].  This becomes important when designing narrowband filters.

A biquad section block diagram using the Direct Form II structure [3,4] is...


Signal Processing Contest in Python (PREVIEW): The Worst Encoder in the World

Jason Sachs September 7, 20136 comments

When I posted an article on estimating velocity from a position encoder, I got a number of responses. A few of them were of the form "Well, it's an interesting article, but at slow speeds why can't you just take the time between the encoder edges, and then...." My point was that there are lots of people out there which take this approach, and don't take into account that the time between encoder edges varies due to manufacturing errors in the encoder. For some reason this is a hard concept...