## Use Matlab Function pwelch to Find Power Spectral Density – or Do It Yourself

January 13, 20198 comments

In my last post, we saw that finding the spectrum of a signal requires several steps beyond computing the discrete Fourier transform (DFT)[1].  These include windowing the signal, taking the magnitude-squared of the DFT, and computing the vector of frequencies.  The Matlab function pwelch [2] performs all these steps, and it also has the option to use DFT averaging to compute the so-called Welch power spectral density estimate [3,4].

## A Markov View of the Phase Vocoder Part 2

January 8, 2019
Introduction

Last post we motivated the idea of viewing the classic phase vocoder as a Markov process. This was due to the fact that the input signal’s features are unknown to the computer, and the phase advancement for the next synthesis frame is entirely dependent on the phase advancement of the current frame. We will dive a bit deeper into this idea, and flesh out some details which we left untouched last week. This includes the effect our discrete Fourier transform has on the...

## A Markov View of the Phase Vocoder Part 1

January 8, 2019
Introduction

Hello! This is my first post on dsprelated.com. I have a blog that I run on my website, http://www.christianyostdsp.com. In order to engage with the larger DSP community, I'd like to occasionally post my more engineering heavy writing here and get your thoughts.

Today we will look at the phase vocoder from a different angle by bringing some probability into the discussion. This is the first part in a short series. Future posts will expand further upon the ideas...

## Evaluate Window Functions for the Discrete Fourier Transform

December 18, 2018

The Discrete Fourier Transform (DFT) operates on a finite length time sequence to compute its spectrum.  For a continuous signal like a sinewave, you need to capture a segment of the signal in order to perform the DFT.  Usually, you also need to apply a window function to the captured signal before taking the DFT [1 - 3].  There are many different window functions and each produces a different approximation of the spectrum.  In this post, we’ll present Matlab code that...

## Feedback Controllers - Making Hardware with Firmware. Part 10. DSP/FPGAs Behaving Irrationally

November 22, 2018

This article will look at a design approach for feedback controllers featuring  low-latency "irrational" characteristics to enable the creation of physical components such as transmission lines. Some thought will also be given as to the capabilities of the currently utilized Intel Cyclone V, the new Cyclone 10 GX and the upcoming Xilinx Versal floating-point FPGAs/ACAPs.

Fig 1. Making a Transmission Line, with the Circuit Emulator

## Design a DAC sinx/x Corrector

July 22, 20187 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...

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

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

## Digital PLL’s, Part 3 – Phase Lock an NCO to an External Clock

May 27, 201823 comments

Sometimes you may need to phase-lock a numerically controlled oscillator (NCO) to an external clock that is not related to the system clocks of your ASIC or FPGA.  This situation is shown in Figure 1.  Assuming your system has an analog-to-digital converter (ADC) available, you can sync to the external clock using the scheme shown in Figure 2.  This time-domain PLL model is similar to the one presented in Part 1 of this series on digital PLL’s [1].  In that PLL, we...

## ADC Clock Jitter Model, Part 2 – Random Jitter

April 22, 20185 comments

In Part 1, I presented a Matlab function to model an ADC with jitter on the sample clock, and applied it to examples with deterministic jitter.  Now we’ll investigate an ADC with random clock jitter, by using a filtered or unfiltered Gaussian sequence as the jitter source.  What we are calling jitter can also be called time jitter, phase jitter, or phase noise.  It’s all the same phenomenon.  Typically, we call it jitter when we have a time-domain representation,...

## ADC Clock Jitter Model, Part 1 – Deterministic Jitter

April 16, 20182 comments

Analog to digital converters (ADC’s) have several imperfections that affect communications signals, including thermal noise, differential nonlinearity, and sample clock jitter [1, 2].  As shown in Figure 1, the ADC has a sample/hold function that is clocked by a sample clock.  Jitter on the sample clock causes the sampling instants to vary from the ideal sample time.  This transfers the jitter from the sample clock to the input signal.

In this article, I present a Matlab...

## Use Matlab Function pwelch to Find Power Spectral Density – or Do It Yourself

January 13, 20198 comments

In my last post, we saw that finding the spectrum of a signal requires several steps beyond computing the discrete Fourier transform (DFT)[1].  These include windowing the signal, taking the magnitude-squared of the DFT, and computing the vector of frequencies.  The Matlab function pwelch [2] performs all these steps, and it also has the option to use DFT averaging to compute the so-called Welch power spectral density estimate [3,4].

## Spline interpolation

May 11, 20146 comments

A cookbook recipe for segmented y=f(x) 3rd-order polynomial interpolation based on arbitrary input data. Includes Octave/Matlab design script and Verilog implementation example. Keywords: Spline, interpolation, function modeling, fixed point approximation, data fitting, Matlab, RTL, Verilog

Introduction

Splines describe a smooth function with a small number of parameters. They are well-known for example from vector drawing programs, or to define a "natural" movement path through given...

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

December 26, 20115 comments

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?”

## Discrete Wavelet Transform Filter Bank Implementation (part 1)

October 27, 20101 comment

UPDATE: Added graphs and code to explain the frequency division of the branches

The focus of this article is to briefly explain an implementation of this transform and several filter bank forms. Theoretical information about DWT can be found elsewhere.

First of all, a 'quick and dirty' simplified explanation of the differences between DFT and DWT:

The DWT (Discrete Wavelet Transform), simply put, is an operation that receives a signal as an input (a vector of data) and...

## Digital PLL's -- Part 2

June 15, 20162 comments

In Part 1, we found the time response of a 2nd order PLL with a proportional + integral (lead-lag) loop filter.  Now let’s look at this PLL in the Z-domain [1, 2].  We will find that the response is characterized by a loop natural frequency ωn and damping coefficient ζ.

Having a Z-domain model of the DPLL will allow us to do three things:

Compute the values of loop filter proportional gain KL and integrator gain KI that give the desired loop natural...

## Phase or Frequency Shifter Using a Hilbert Transformer

March 25, 201819 comments

In this article, we’ll describe how to use a Hilbert transformer to make a phase shifter or frequency shifter.  In either case, the input is a real signal and the output is a real signal.  We’ll use some simple Matlab code to simulate these systems.  After that, we’ll go into a little more detail on Hilbert transformer theory and design.

Phase Shifter

A conceptual diagram...

## Discrete Wavelet Transform Filter Bank Implementation (part 2)

December 5, 20109 comments

Following the previous blog entry: http://www.dsprelated.com/showarticle/115.php

Difference between DWT and DWPT

Before getting to the equivalent filter obtention, I first want to talk about the difference between DWT(Discrete Wavelet Transform) and DWPT (Discrete Wavelet Packet Transform). The latter is used mostly for image processing.

While DWT has a single "high-pass" branch that filters the signal with the h1 filter, the DWPT separates branches symmetricaly: this means that one...

## Design IIR Highpass Filters

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...

## The Power Spectrum

October 8, 2016

Often, when calculating the spectrum of a sampled signal, we are interested in relative powers, and we don’t care about the absolute accuracy of the y axis.  However, when the sampled signal represents an analog signal, we sometimes need an accurate picture of the analog signal’s power in the frequency domain.  This post shows how to calculate an accurate power spectrum.

Parseval’s theorem [1,2] is a property of the Discrete Fourier Transform (DFT) that...

## Matlab Code to Synthesize Multiplierless FIR Filters

October 31, 20163 comments

This article presents Matlab code to synthesize multiplierless Finite Impulse Response (FIR) lowpass filters.

A filter coefficient can be represented as a sum of powers of 2.  For example, if a coefficient = decimal 5 multiplies input x, the output is $y= 2^2*x + 2^0*x$.  The factor of $2^2$ is then implemented with a shift of 2 bits.  This method is not efficient for coefficients having a lot of 1’s, e.g. decimal 31 = 11111.  To reduce the number of non-zero...