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

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

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

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...

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

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...

## Project introduction: Digital Filter Blocks in MyHDL and their integration in pyFDA

Hi everyone! After a lot of hesitation and several failed attempts, I have finally entered the world of blogging. A little about myself : My name is Sriyash Caculo and I’m a third year undergrad student at BITS Pilani K.K. Birla Goa Campus  pursuing a major in Electronics and Instrumentation engineering. Being an electronics engineer, I developed an interest in Digital Signal Processing and its implementation on hardware.

This blog-post is the first of many to come for the...

## Two Easy Ways To Test Multistage CIC Decimation Filters

This blog presents two very easy ways to test the performance of multistage cascaded integrator-comb (CIC) decimation filters [1]. Anyone implementing CIC filters should take note of the following proposed CIC filter test methods.

Introduction

Figure 1 presents a multistage decimate by D CIC filter where the number of stages is S = 3. The '↓D' operation represents downsampling by integer D (discard all but every Dth sample), and n is the time index.

If the Figure 3 filter's...

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

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,...

## Take Control of Noise with Spectral Averaging

Most engineers have seen the moment-to-moment fluctuations that are common with instantaneous measurements of a supposedly steady spectrum. You can see these fluctuations in magnitude and phase for each frequency bin of your spectrogram. Although major variations are certainly reason for concern, recall that we don’t live in an ideal, noise-free world. After verifying the integrity of your measurement setup by checking connections, sensors, wiring, and the like, you might conclude that the...

## Linear Feedback Shift Registers for the Uninitiated, Part XIV: Gold Codes

April 18, 2018

Last time we looked at some techniques using LFSR output for system identification, making use of the peculiar autocorrelation properties of pseudorandom bit sequences (PRBS) derived from an LFSR.

This time we’re going to jump back to the field of communications, to look at an invention called Gold codes and why a single maximum-length PRBS isn’t enough to save the world using spread-spectrum technology. We have to cover two little side discussions before we can get into Gold...

## FFT Interpolation Based on FFT Samples: A Detective Story With a Surprise Ending

This blog presents several interesting things I recently learned regarding the estimation of a spectral value located at a frequency lying between previously computed FFT spectral samples. My curiosity about this FFT interpolation process was triggered by reading a spectrum analysis paper written by three astronomers [1].

My fixation on one equation in that paper led to the creation of this blog.

Background

The notion of FFT interpolation is straightforward to describe. That is, for example,...

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

April 16, 2018

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.

## Linear-phase DC Removal Filter

This blog describes several DC removal networks that might be of interest to the dsprelated.com readers.

Back in August 2007 there was a thread on the comp.dsp newsgroup concerning the process of removing the DC (zero Hz) component from a time-domain sequence [1]. Discussed in that thread was the notion of removing a signal's DC bias by subtracting the signal's moving average from that signal, as shown in Figure 1(a).

Figure 1.

At first I thought...

## Frequency-Domain Periodicity and the Discrete Fourier Transform

August 6, 2012

Introduction

Some of the better understood aspects of time-sampled systems are the limitations and requirements imposed by the Nyquist sampling theorem [1]. Somewhat less understood is the periodic nature of the spectra of sampled signals. This article provides some insights into sampling that not only explain the periodic nature of the sampled spectrum, but aliasing, bandlimited sampling, and the so-called "super-Nyquist" or IF sampling. The approaches taken here include both mathematical...

## Accurate Measurement of a Sinusoid's Peak Amplitude Based on FFT Data

There are two code snippets associated with this blog post:

Flat-Top Windowing Function for the Accurate Measurement of a Sinusoid's Peak Amplitude Based on FFT Data

and

Testing the Flat-Top Windowing Function

This blog discusses an accurate method of estimating time-domain sinewave peak amplitudes based on fast Fourier transform (FFT) data. Such an operation sounds simple, but the scalloping loss characteristic of FFTs complicates the process. We eliminate that complication by...

## The Exponential Nature of the Complex Unit Circle

Introduction

This is an article to hopefully give an understanding to Euler's magnificent equation:

$$e^{i\theta} = cos( \theta ) + i \cdot sin( \theta )$$

This equation is usually proved using the Taylor series expansion for the given functions, but this approach fails to give an understanding to the equation and the ramification for the behavior of complex numbers. Instead an intuitive approach is taken that culminates in a graphical understanding of the equation.

Complex...

## Oscilloscope Dreams

My coworkers and I recently needed a new oscilloscope. I thought I would share some of the features I look for when purchasing one.

When I was in college in the early 1990's, our oscilloscopes looked like this:

Now the cathode ray tubes have almost all been replaced by digital storage scopes with color LCD screens, and they look like these:

Oscilloscopes are basically just fancy expensive boxes for graphing voltage vs. time. They span a wide range of features and prices:...

## Computing the Group Delay of a Filter

I just learned a new method (new to me at least) for computing the group delay of digital filters. In the event this process turns out to be interesting to my readers, this blog describes the method. Let's start with a bit of algebra so that you'll know I'm not making all of this up.

Assume we have the N-sample h(n) impulse response of a digital filter, with n being our time-domain index, and that we represent the filter's discrete-time Fourier transform (DTFT), H(ω), in polar form...

## How to Find a Fast Floating-Point atan2 Approximation

Context Over a short period of time, I came across nearly identical approximations of the two parameter arctangent function, atan2, developed by different companies, in different countries, and even in different decades. Fascinated with how the coefficients used in these approximations were derived, I set out to find them. This atan2 implementation is based around a rational approximation of arctangent on the domain -1 to 1:

 atan(z) \approx \dfrac{z}{1.0 +...

## TCP/IP interface (Matlab/Octave)

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...

## Noise shaping

December 9, 20121 comment

Keywords: Quantization noise; noise shaping

A brief introduction to noise shaping, with firm resolve not to miss the forest for the trees. We may still stumble over some assorted roots. Matlab example code is included.

Quantization

Fig. 1 shows a digital signal that is reduced to a lower bit width, for example a 16 bit signal being sent to a 12 bit digital-to-analog converter. Rounding to the nearest output value is obviously the best that can be done to minimize the error of each...

## Optimizing the Half-band Filters in Multistage Decimation and Interpolation

This blog discusses a not so well-known rule regarding the filtering in multistage decimation and interpolation by an integer power of two. I'm referring to sample rate change systems using half-band lowpass filters (LPFs) as shown in Figure 1. Here's the story.

Figure 1: Multistage decimation and interpolation using half-band filters.

Multistage Decimation – A Very Brief Review

Figure 2(a) depicts the process of decimation by an integer factor D. That...

## Collaborative Writing Experiment: Your Favorite DSP Websites

May 30, 2013

You are invited to contribute to the content of this blog post through the magic of Google Docs' real time collaboration feature.

I discovered this tool several months ago when I was looking for a way to coordinate our annual family halloween party (potluck) and avoid the very unpleasant situation of ending up with too much chips and not enough chocolate (first world problem!).  It was amusing to keep an eye on the "food you will bring" document we had created for this and watch...

Hello!

It's been a while since you've heard from me - and there are many reasons why:

2 - I've been working on unifying the user management system.  You can now participate to the three related sites (DSPRelated, FPGARelated and EmbeddedRelated) with only one account (same login info).

3- I've been working on getting up to speed with social networks and especially Twitter.   I have resisted the idea for a while - at 40...

## Two jobs

For those of you following closely embeddedrelated and the other related sites, you might have noticed that I have been less active for the last couple of months, and I will use this blog post to explain why. The main reason is that I got myself involved into a project that ended up using a better part of my cpu than I originally thought it would.

I currently have two jobs: one as an electrical/dsp engineer recycled as a web publisher and the other as a parent of three kids. My job...

## Do you like the new Comments System?

I have just finished implementing a new comments system for the blogs.  Do you like it?

I'll wait a few days and make sure it works properly and then I'll port it to the code snippets and papers section.

Thanks!

## DSP Papers, Articles, Theses, etc

March 17, 20111 comment

As you may already know, there is a 'Papers and Theses' section on DSPRelated:http://www.dsprelated.com/documents.phpThere are hundreds of DSP Related documents (articles, papers, theses, dissertations, etc) scattered all around the web, and the goal with this section is to find and list as many of those documents as possible in one place. There are, at the moment, a little over 100 documents listed, which I believe is only a small subset of what is available out there, and I need your help...

## Code Snippets Suggestions

Despite being only a couple of months old, the Code Snippet section ( DSPRelated.com/code.php ) already contains tens of snippets, thanks to the contributors who have taken the time to share their code.

But let's not stop here - there is room for several hundreds more snippets before the database can be said to cover a decent portion of the DSP field.

To keep the momentum going, I will do two things:

First, I am modifying the rewards program.  Instead of...

## Latest DSP Books

December 1, 2010

As you may already know, Rick Lyons has just published a new edition of his highly acclaimed book: "Understanding Digital Signal Processing".   This book has been getting very high ratings and positive reviews from the DSP community since the publication of the first edition.  The 3rd edition seems to contain more than enough new material to justify replacing your old copy.

Also of possible interest to you, a new DSP book by C. Britton Rorabaugh titled "

## Code Snippets Section Now LIVE

November 2, 20101 comment

The new code sharing section is now live and can be accessed HERE.

Please take a few minutes to rate and/or comment the snippets that you have the expertise to judge.

If you think of some code snippets that you would like to share with the DSP community, please apply to become a contributor HERE.

If you are not aware of the reward program for contributors, your can learn about it HERE.

## New Code Sharing Section & Reward Program for Contributors!

UPDATE (11/02/2010): The code section is now live.

UPDATE 2 (01/31/2011): The reward program has changed.  A flat fee of \$20 per code snippet submitted will now be paid.

_______________

I am very happy to finally announce the imminent launch of the new code sharing section.  My vision for this new section is a rich library of high quality code snippets for the DSP community, from processor specific functions to Matlab or Scilab routines, from the simplest filter...

## 50,000th Member Announced!

January 11, 2010

In my last post, I wrote that DSPRelated.com was about to reach the 50,000 members mark.  Well, I am very happy to announce that it happened during the holidays, and the lucky person is Charlie Tsai from Taiwan.  Charlie is an assistant professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering at the National Central University in Taiwan where he teaches the "Biomedical Signal Processing" class.  He is also the advisor of the