PID Without a PhD
I both consult and teach in the area of digital control. Through both of these efforts, I have found that while there certainly are control problems that require all the expertise I can bring to bear, there are a great number of control problems...
Harmonic Notch Filter
My basement is covered with power lines and florescent lights which makes collecting ECG and EEG data rather difficult due to the 60 cycle hum. I found the following notch filter to work very well at eliminating the background signal...
A Useful Source of Signal Processing Information
I just discovered a useful web-based source of signal processing information that was new to me. I thought I'd share what I learned with the subscribers here on DSPRelated.com. The Home page of the web site that I found doesn't look at...
3 Good News
Good News #1 Last week, I announced a new and ambitious reward program that will be funded by the new Vendors Directory. This week, I am happy to announce that we have our firsts two sponsors! Quantum Leaps & Abelon Systems have...
Generating pink noise
In one of his most famous columns for Scientific American, Martin Gardner wrote about pink noise and its relation to fractal music. The article was based on a 1978 paper by Voss and Clarke, which presents, among other things, a simple...
Exponential Smoothing with a Wrinkle
Introduction This is an article to hopefully give a better understanding to the Discrete Fourier Transform (DFT) by providing a set of preprocessing filters to improve the resolution of the DFT. Because of the exponential nature of...
Discrete-Time PLLs, Part 1: Basics
In this series of tutorials on discrete-time PLLs we will be focusing on Phase-Locked Loops that can be implemented in discrete-time signal proessors such as FPGAs, DSPs and of course, MATLAB.
Analytic Signal
In communication theory and modulation theory we always deal with two phases: In-phase (I) and Quadrature-phase (Q). The question that I will discuss in this blog is that why we use two phases and not more.
Blogging Tutorial
This article will be updated on a regular basis based on your questions and feedback. Creating a new blog post Make sure your are logged in Click on 'Create new blog post' Although the online editor works pretty well and...
Four Ways to Compute an Inverse FFT Using the Forward FFT Algorithm
If you need to compute inverse fast Fourier transforms (inverse FFTs) but you only have forward FFT software (or forward FFT FPGA cores) available to you, below are four ways to solve your problem. Preliminaries To define what we're...
Analytic Signal
In communication theory and modulation theory we always deal with two phases: In-phase (I) and Quadrature-phase (Q). The question that I will discuss in this blog is that why we use two phases and not more.
Some Thoughts on Sampling
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...
Discrete-Time PLLs, Part 1: Basics
In this series of tutorials on discrete-time PLLs we will be focusing on Phase-Locked Loops that can be implemented in discrete-time signal proessors such as FPGAs, DSPs and of course, MATLAB.
Round Round Get Around: Why Fixed-Point Right-Shifts Are Just Fine
Today’s topic is rounding in embedded systems, or more specifically, why you don’t need to worry about it in many cases.One of the issues faced in computer arithmetic is that exact arithmetic requires an ever-increasing bit length to...
Matlab Code to Synthesize Multiplierless FIR Filters
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,...
Discrete Wavelet Transform Filter Bank Implementation (part 1)
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...
The Real Star of Star Trek
Unless you've been living under a rock recently, you're probably aware that this month is the 50-year anniversary of the original Star Trek show on American television. It's an anniversary worth noting, as did Time Magazine with their special...
Should DSP Undergraduate Students Study Z-transform Regions of Convergence?
Not long ago I presented my 3-day DSP class to a group of engineers at Tektronix Inc. in Beaverton Oregon [1]. After I finished covering my material on IIR filters' z-plane pole locations and filter stability, one of the Tektronix engineers asked...
Use DPLL to Lock Digital Oscillator to 1PPS Signal
Introduction There are occasions where it is desirable to lock a digital oscillator to an external time reference such as the 1PPS (One Pulse Per Second) signal output from a GPS receiver. One approach would be to synchronize a fixed frequency...
A Useful Source of Signal Processing Information
I just discovered a useful web-based source of signal processing information that was new to me. I thought I'd share what I learned with the subscribers here on DSPRelated.com. The Home page of the web site that I found doesn't look at...
