Project Report : Digital Filter Blocks in MyHDL and their integration in pyFDA

Sriyash Caculo August 13, 20181 comment

The Google Summer of Code 2018 is now in its final stages, and I’d like to take a moment to look back at what goals were accomplished, what remains to be completed and what I have learnt.

The project overview was discussed in the previous blog posts. However this post serves as a guide to anyone who wishes to learn about the project or carry it forward. Hence I will go over the project details again.

Project overview

The project “Digital Filter Blocks in MyHDL and PyFDA integration" aims...


Sensors Expo - Trip Report & My Best Video Yet!

Stephane Boucher August 3, 20183 comments

This was my first time at Sensors Expo and my second time in Silicon Valley and I must say I had a great time.  

Before I share with you what I find to be, by far, my best 'highlights' video yet for a conference/trade show, let me try to entertain you with a few anecdotes from this trip.  If you are not interested by my stories or maybe don't have the extra minutes needed to read them, please feel free to skip to the end of this blog post to watch the...


Design a DAC sinx/x Corrector

Neil Robertson July 22, 20189 comments

This post provides a Matlab function that designs linear-phase FIR sinx/x correctors.  It includes a table of fixed-point sinx/x corrector coefficients for different DAC frequency ranges.

A sinx/x corrector is a digital (or analog) filter used to compensate for the sinx/x roll-off inherent in the digital to analog conversion process.  In DSP math, we treat the digital signal applied to the DAC is a sequence of impulses.  These are converted by the DAC into contiguous pulses...


Off Topic: Refraction in a Varying Medium

Cedron Dawg July 11, 2018
Introduction

This article is another digression from a better understanding of the DFT. In fact, it is a digression from DSP altogether. However, since many of the readers here are Electrical Engineers and other folks who are very scientifically minded, I hope this article is of interest. A differential vector equation is derived for the trajectory of a point particle in a field of varying index of refraction. This applies to light, of course, but since it is a purely theoretical...


Feedback Controllers - Making Hardware with Firmware. Part 9. Closing the low-latency loop

Steve Maslen July 9, 2018

It's time to put together the DSP and feedback control sciences, the evaluation electronics, the Intel Cyclone floating-point FPGA algorithms and the built-in control loop test-bed and evaluate some example designs. We will be counting the nanoseconds and looking for textbook performance in the creation of emulated hardware circuits. Along the way, there is a printed circuit board (PCB) issue to solve using DSP.    

Fig 1. The evaluation platform

Additional design...


Project update-2 : Digital Filter Blocks in MyHDL and their integration in pyFDA

Sriyash Caculo July 9, 2018

This is an exciting update in the sense that it demonstrates a working model of one important aspect of the project: The integration or ‘glue’ between and Pyfda and MyHDL filter blocks. 

So, why do we need to integrate and how do we go about it?

As discussed in earlier posts, the idea is to provide a workflow in Pyfda that automates the process of Implementing a fixpoint filter in VHDL / Verilog, and verify the correct performance in a digital design environment. MyHDL based...


Project update-1 : Digital Filter Blocks in MyHDL and their integration in pyFDA

Sriyash Caculo June 22, 2018

This blog post presents the progress made up to week 5 in my GSoC project “Digital Filter blocks and their integration in PyFDA”. Progress was made in two areas of the project.

  • Implementation of filter blocks in MyHDL
  • Design of interface between filter blocks and PyFDA

This post will primarily discuss filter block implementation. The interface will be discussed in a later post once further progress is made.

Direct form-I FIR filter

The equation specifies the direct form I...


Linear Feedback Shift Registers for the Uninitiated, Part XVI: Reed-Solomon Error Correction

Jason Sachs June 19, 2018

Last time, we talked about error correction and detection, covering some basics like Hamming distance, CRCs, and Hamming codes. If you are new to this topic, I would strongly suggest going back to read that article before this one.

This time we are going to cover Reed-Solomon codes. (I had meant to cover this topic in Part XV, but the article was getting to be too long, so I’ve split it roughly in half.) These are one of the workhorses of error-correction, and they are used in...


Linear Feedback Shift Registers for the Uninitiated, Part XV: Error Detection and Correction

Jason Sachs June 12, 2018

Last time, we talked about Gold codes, a specially-constructed set of pseudorandom bit sequences (PRBS) with low mutual cross-correlation, which are used in many spread-spectrum communications systems, including the Global Positioning System.

This time we are wading into the field of error detection and correction, in particular CRCs and Hamming codes.

Ernie, You Have a Banana in Your Ear

I have had a really really tough time writing this article. I like the...


Who else is going to Sensors Expo in San Jose? Looking for roommate(s)!

Stephane Boucher May 29, 20186 comments

This will be my first time attending this show and I must say that I am excited. I am bringing with me my cameras and other video equipment with the intention to capture as much footage as possible and produce a (hopefully) fun to watch 'highlights' video. I will also try to film as many demos as possible and share them with you.

I enjoy going to shows like this one as it gives me the opportunity to get out of my home-office (from where I manage and run the *Related sites) and actually...


The DFT Output and Its Dimensions

Leonid Ovanesyan December 29, 20155 comments

The Discrete Fourier Transform, or DFT, converts a signal from discrete time to discrete frequency. It is commonly implemented as and used as the Fast Fourier Transform (FFT). This article will attempt to clarify the format of the DFT output and how it is produced.

Living in the real world, we deal with real signals. The data we typically sample does not have an imaginary component. For example, the voltage sampled by a receiver is a real value at a particular point in time. Let’s...


Using the DFT as a Filter: Correcting a Misconception

Rick Lyons February 18, 201316 comments

I have read, in some of the literature of DSP, that when the discrete Fourier transform (DFT) is used as a filter the process of performing a DFT causes an input signal's spectrum to be frequency translated down to zero Hz (DC). I can understand why someone might say that, but I challenge that statement as being incorrect. Here are my thoughts.

Using the DFT as a Filter It may seem strange to think of the DFT as being used as a filter but there are a number of applications where this is...


Python scipy.signal IIR Filter Design Cont.

Christopher Felton June 19, 20127 comments

In the previous post the Python scipy.signal iirdesign function was disected.  We reviewed the basics of filter specification and reviewed how to use the iirdesign function to design IIR filters.  The previous post I only demonstrated low pass filter designs.  The following are examples how to use the iirdesign function for highpass, bandpass, and stopband filters designs.

Highpass Filter

The following is a highpass filter design for the different filter...


Fractional Delay FIR Filters

Neil Robertson February 9, 202014 comments

Consider the following Finite Impulse Response (FIR) coefficients:

b = [b0 b1 b2 b1 b0]

These coefficients form a 5-tap symmetrical FIR filter having constant group delay [1,2] over 0 to fs/2 of:

D = (ntaps – 1)/2 = 2      samples

For a symmetrical filter with an odd number of taps, the group delay is always an integer number of samples, while for one with an even number of taps, the group delay is always an integer + 0.5 samples.  Can we design a filter...


Waveforms that are their own Fourier Transform

Steve Smith January 16, 200812 comments

Mea Culpa 

There are many scary things about writing a technical book. Can I make the concepts clear? It is worth the effort? Will it sell? But all of these pale compared to the biggest fear: What if I'm just plain wrong? Not being able to help someone is one thing, but leading them astray is far worse.

My book on DSP has now been published for almost ten years. I've found lots of typos, a few misstatements, and many places where the explanations confuse even me. But I have been lucky;...


Understanding Radio Frequency Distortion

Markus Nentwig September 26, 20102 comments
Overview

The topic of this article are the effects of radio frequency distortions on a baseband signal, and how to model them at baseband. Typical applications are use as a simulation model or in digital predistortion algorithms.

Introduction

Transmitting and receiving wireless signals usually involves analog radio frequency circuits, such as power amplifiers in a transmitter or low-noise amplifiers in a receiver.Signal distortion in those circuits deteriorates the link quality. When...


Shared-multiplier polyphase FIR filter

Markus Nentwig July 31, 20136 comments

Keywords: FPGA, interpolating decimating FIR filter, sample rate conversion, shared multiplexed pipelined multiplier

Discussion, working code (parametrized Verilog) and Matlab reference design for a FIR polyphase resampler with arbitrary interpolation and decimation ratio, mapped to one multiplier and RAM.

Introduction

A polyphase filter can be as straightforward as multirate DSP ever gets, if it doesn't turn into a semi-deterministic, three-legged little dance between input, output and...


Design of an anti-aliasing filter for a DAC

Markus Nentwig August 18, 2012
Overview
  • Octaveforge / Matlab design script. Download: here
  • weighted numerical optimization of Laplace-domain transfer function
  • linear-phase design, optimizes vector error (magnitude and phase)
  • design process calculates and corrects group delay internally
  • includes sinc() response of the sample-and-hold stage in the ADC
  • optionally includes multiplierless FIR filter
Problem Figure 1: Typical FIR-DAC-analog lowpass line-up

Digital-to-analog conversion connects digital...


Design a DAC sinx/x Corrector

Neil Robertson July 22, 20189 comments

This post provides a Matlab function that designs linear-phase FIR sinx/x correctors.  It includes a table of fixed-point sinx/x corrector coefficients for different DAC frequency ranges.

A sinx/x corrector is a digital (or analog) filter used to compensate for the sinx/x roll-off inherent in the digital to analog conversion process.  In DSP math, we treat the digital signal applied to the DAC is a sequence of impulses.  These are converted by the DAC into contiguous pulses...


Instantaneous Frequency Measurement

Parth Vakil February 4, 200821 comments

I would like to talk about the oft used method of measuring the carrier frequency in the world of Signal Collection and Characterization world. It is an elegant technique because of its simplicity. But, of course, with simplicity, there come drawbacks (sometimes...especially with this one!).

In the world of Radar detection and characterization, one of the key characteristics of interest is the carrier frequency of the signal. If the radar is pulsed, you will have a very wide bandwidth, a...