## Compute Images/Aliases of CIC Interpolators/Decimators

November 1, 20202 comments

Cascade-Integrator-Comb (CIC) filters are efficient fixed-point interpolators or decimators.  For these filters, all coefficients are equal to 1, and there are no multipliers.  They are typically used when a large change in sample rate is needed.  This article provides two very simple Matlab functions that can be used to compute the spectral images of CIC interpolators and the aliases of CIC decimators.

1.  CIC Interpolators

Figure 1 shows three interpolate-by-M...

## Interpolation Basics

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...

## Compute the Frequency Response of a Multistage Decimator

February 10, 20192 comments

Figure 1a shows the block diagram of a decimation-by-8 filter, consisting of a low-pass finite impulse response (FIR) filter followed by downsampling by 8 [1].  A more efficient version is shown in Figure 1b, which uses three cascaded decimate-by-two filters.  This implementation has the advantages that only FIR 1 is sampled at the highest sample rate, and the total number of filter taps is lower.

The frequency response of the single-stage decimator before downsampling is just...

## Multi-Decimation Stage Filtering for Sigma Delta ADCs: Design and Optimization

March 1, 20176 comments

During my research on digital FIR decimation filters I have been developing various Matlab scripts and functions. In which I have decided later on to consolidate it in a form of a toolbox. I have developed this toolbox to assist and automate the process of designing the multi-stage decimation filter(s). The toolbox is published as an open-source at the MathWorks web-site. My dissertation is open for public online as well. The toolbox has a wide set of examples to guide the user...

## Some Thoughts on Sampling

November 15, 20162 comments

Some time ago, I came across an interesting problem. In the explanation of sampling process, a representation of impulse sampling shown in Figure 1 below is illustrated in almost every textbook on DSP and communications. The question is: how is it possible that during sampling, the frequency axis gets scaled by $1/T_s$ -- a very large number? For an ADC operating at 10 MHz for example, the amplitude of the desired spectrum and spectral replicas is $10^7$! I thought that there must be...

## Polyphase Filters and Filterbanks

March 19, 201310 comments

ALONG CAME POLY

Polyphase filtering is a computationally efficient structure for applying resampling and filtering to a signal. Most digital filters can be applied in a polyphase format, and it is also possible to create efficient resampling filterbanks using the same theories.

This post will walk through a reference implementation of both the downsampling polyphase filter and a downsampling polyphase filterbank using scipy, numpy, matplotlib, and python. It should also highlight some of...

## 'z' as in 'Zorro': Frequency Masking FIR

October 2, 2012

An efficient way to implement FIR filters. Matlab / Octave example included. Keywords: Frequency masking FIR filter implementation

Introduction

An "upsampled" FIR filter uses multiple-sample delays between the taps, compared to the unity delays in a conventional FIR filter. The resulting frequency response has steeper edges, but contains periodic images along the frequency axis (Fig. 1). Due to the latter, it is typically not too useful on its own.

Figure 1: Conventional and 'upsampled'...

## FIR sideways (interpolator polyphase decomposition)

September 12, 20129 comments

An efficient implementation of a symmetric-FIR polyphase 1:3 interpolator that doesn't follow the usual tapped delay line-paradigm. The example exploits the impulse response symmetry and avoids four multiplications out of 10. keywords: symmetric polyphase FIR filter implementation ASIC Matlab / Octave implementation

Introduction

An interpolating FIR filter can be implemented with a single tapped delay line, possibly going forwards and backwards for a symmetric impulse response. To...

## The History of CIC Filters: The Untold Story

February 20, 20124 comments

If you have ever studied or designed a cascaded integrator-comb (CIC) lowpass filter then surely you've read Eugene Hogenauer's seminal 1981 IEEE paper where he first introduced the CIC filter to the signal processing world [1]. As it turns out, Hogenauer's famous paper was not the first formal document describing and proposing CIC filters. Here's the story.

In the Fall of 1979 Eugene Hogenauer was finalizing his development of the CIC filter, the filter now used in so many multirate signal...

## Design study: 1:64 interpolating pulse shaping FIR

December 26, 20115 comments

This article is the documentation to a code snippet that originated from a discussion on comp.dsp.

The task is to design a root-raised cosine filter with a rolloff of a=0.15 that interpolates to 64x the symbol rate at the input.

The code snippet shows a solution that is relatively straightforward to design and achieves reasonably good efficiency using only FIR filters.

Motivation: “simple solutions?”

## Polyphase Filters and Filterbanks

March 19, 201310 comments

ALONG CAME POLY

Polyphase filtering is a computationally efficient structure for applying resampling and filtering to a signal. Most digital filters can be applied in a polyphase format, and it is also possible to create efficient resampling filterbanks using the same theories.

This post will walk through a reference implementation of both the downsampling polyphase filter and a downsampling polyphase filterbank using scipy, numpy, matplotlib, and python. It should also highlight some of...

## Spectral Flipping Around Signal Center Frequency

November 7, 20074 comments

Most of us are familiar with the process of flipping the spectrum (spectral inversion) of a real signal by multiplying that signal's time samples by (-1)n. In that process the center of spectral rotation is fs/4, where fs is the signal's sample rate in Hz. In this blog we discuss a different kind of spectral flipping process.

Consider the situation where we need to flip the X(f) spectrum in Figure 1(a) to obtain the desired Y(f) spectrum shown in Figure 1(b). Notice that the center of...

## Interpolation Basics

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...

## The History of CIC Filters: The Untold Story

February 20, 20124 comments

If you have ever studied or designed a cascaded integrator-comb (CIC) lowpass filter then surely you've read Eugene Hogenauer's seminal 1981 IEEE paper where he first introduced the CIC filter to the signal processing world [1]. As it turns out, Hogenauer's famous paper was not the first formal document describing and proposing CIC filters. Here's the story.

In the Fall of 1979 Eugene Hogenauer was finalizing his development of the CIC filter, the filter now used in so many multirate signal...

## Design study: 1:64 interpolating pulse shaping FIR

December 26, 20115 comments

This article is the documentation to a code snippet that originated from a discussion on comp.dsp.

The task is to design a root-raised cosine filter with a rolloff of a=0.15 that interpolates to 64x the symbol rate at the input.

The code snippet shows a solution that is relatively straightforward to design and achieves reasonably good efficiency using only FIR filters.

Motivation: “simple solutions?”

## Do Multirate Systems Have Transfer Functions?

May 30, 20112 comments

The following text describes why I ask the strange question in the title of this blog. Some months ago I was asked to review a article manuscript, for possible publication in a signal processing journal, that presented a method for improving the performance of cascaded integrator-comb (CIC) decimation filters [1].

Thinking about such filters, Figure 1(a) shows the block diagram of a traditional 2nd-order CIC decimation filter followed by downsampling by the sample rate factor R. There we...

## Compute the Frequency Response of a Multistage Decimator

February 10, 20192 comments

Figure 1a shows the block diagram of a decimation-by-8 filter, consisting of a low-pass finite impulse response (FIR) filter followed by downsampling by 8 [1].  A more efficient version is shown in Figure 1b, which uses three cascaded decimate-by-two filters.  This implementation has the advantages that only FIR 1 is sampled at the highest sample rate, and the total number of filter taps is lower.

The frequency response of the single-stage decimator before downsampling is just...

## FIR sideways (interpolator polyphase decomposition)

September 12, 20129 comments

An efficient implementation of a symmetric-FIR polyphase 1:3 interpolator that doesn't follow the usual tapped delay line-paradigm. The example exploits the impulse response symmetry and avoids four multiplications out of 10. keywords: symmetric polyphase FIR filter implementation ASIC Matlab / Octave implementation

Introduction

An interpolating FIR filter can be implemented with a single tapped delay line, possibly going forwards and backwards for a symmetric impulse response. To...

## Some Thoughts on Sampling

November 15, 20162 comments

Some time ago, I came across an interesting problem. In the explanation of sampling process, a representation of impulse sampling shown in Figure 1 below is illustrated in almost every textbook on DSP and communications. The question is: how is it possible that during sampling, the frequency axis gets scaled by $1/T_s$ -- a very large number? For an ADC operating at 10 MHz for example, the amplitude of the desired spectrum and spectral replicas is $10^7$! I thought that there must be...

## Bank-switched Farrow resampler

August 13, 20113 comments
Bank-switched Farrow resampler Summary

A modification of the Farrow structure with reduced computational complexity.Compared to a conventional design, the impulse response is broken into a higher number of segments. Interpolation accuracy is achieved with a lower polynomial order, requiring fewer multiplications per output sample at the expense of a higher overall number of coefficients.

Example code

This code snippet provides a Matlab / Octave implementation.And