Implementing Impractical Digital Filters

This blog discusses a problematic situation that can arise when we try to implement certain digital filters. Occasionally in the literature of DSP we encounter impractical digital IIR filter block diagrams, and by impractical I mean block...

An Astounding Digital Filter Design Application

I've recently encountered a digital filter design application that astonished me with its design flexibility, capability, and ease of use. The software is called the " ASN Filter Designer." After experimenting with a demo version of...

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...

Margin Call: Fermi Problems, Highway Horrors, Black Swans, and Why You Should Worry About When You Should Worry

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.

Candan's Tweaks of Jacobsen's Frequency Approximation

Introduction This is an article to hopefully give a better understanding of the Discrete Fourier Transform (DFT) by explaining how a tweak to a well known frequency approximation formula makes it better, and another tweak makes it exact. The...

Using Mason's Rule to Analyze DSP Networks

There have been times when I wanted to determine the z-domain transfer function of some discrete network, but my algebra skills failed me. Some time ago I learned Mason's Rule, which helped me solve my problems. If you're willing to learn the...

Off-Topic: A Fluidic Model of the Universe

Introduction This article is a followup to my previous article "Off Topic: Refraction in a Varying Medium"[1]. Many of the concepts should be quite familiar and of interest to the readership of this site. In the "Speculations" section of my...

Learn About Transmission Lines Using a Discrete-Time Model

We don’t often think about signal transmission lines, but we use them every day.  Familiar examples are coaxial cable, Ethernet cable, and Universal Serial Bus (USB).  Like it or not, high-speed clock and signal traces on...

Determination of the transfer function of passive networks with MATLAB Functions

With MATLAB functions, the transfer function of passive networks can be determined relatively easily. The method is explained using the example of a passive low-pass filter of the sixth order, which is shown in FIG.Fig.1 Passive low-pass filter...

A DSP Quiz Question

Here's a DSP Quiz Question that I hope you find mildly interestingBACKGROUNDDue to the periodic natures an N-point discrete Fourier transform (DFT) sequence and that sequence’s inverse DFT, it is occasionally reasonable to graphically plot...

Setting Carrier to Noise Ratio in Simulations

When simulating digital receivers, we often want to check performance with added Gaussian noise.  In this article, I’ll derive the simple equations for the rms noise level needed to produce a desired carrier to noise ratio (CNR or...

Add a Power Marker to a Power Spectral Density (PSD) Plot

Perhaps we should call most Power Spectral Density (PSD) calculations relative PSD, because usually we don’t have to worry about absolute power levels.  However, for cases (e.g., measurements or simulations) where we are concerned with...

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...

Compute Images/Aliases of CIC Interpolators/Decimators

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...