
Add the Hilbert Transformer to Your DSP Toolkit, Part 2
In this part, I’ll show how to design a Hilbert Transformer using the coefficients of a half-band filter as a starting point, which turns out to be remarkably simple. I’ll also show how a half-band filter can be synthesized using the...

Add the Hilbert Transformer to Your DSP Toolkit, Part 1
In some previous articles, I made use of the Hilbert transformer, but did not explain its theory in any detail. In this article, I’ll dig a little deeper into how the Hilbert Transformer works. Understanding the Hilbert Transformer...

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...

A Recipe for a Basic Trigonometry Table
Introduction This is an article that is give a better understanding to the Discrete Fourier Transform (DFT) by showing how to build a Sine and Cosine table from scratch. Along the way a recursive method is developed as a tone generator for a...

A New Contender in the Quadrature Oscillator Race
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...

Filtering Noise: The Basics (Part 1)
IntroductionFinding signals in the presence of noise is one of the fundamental quests of the discipline of signal processing. Noise is inherently random by nature, so a probability oriented approach is needed to develop a mathematical framework...

Evaluate Noise Performance of Discrete-Time Differentiators
When it comes to noise, all differentiators are not created equal. Figure 1 shows the magnitude response of two differentiators. They both have a useful bandwidth of a little less than π/8 radians (based on maximum magnitude response...

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...

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...

60-Hz Noise and Baseline Drift Reduction in ECG Signal Processing
Electrocardiogram (ECG) signals are obtained by monitoring the electrical activity of the human heart for medical diagnostic purposes [1]. This blog describes a very efficient digital filter used to reduce both 60 Hz AC powerline noise and...

A New Contender in the Quadrature Oscillator Race
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...

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

Update to a Narrow Bandpass Filter in Octave or Matlab
Following my earlier blog post (June 2020) featuring a Narrow Bandpass Filter, I’ve had some useful feedback and suggestions. This has inspired me to come up with an updated version, incorporating the following changes compared to the earlier...

An Efficient Full-Band Sliding DFT Spectrum Analyzer
In this blog I present two computationally efficient full-band discrete Fourier transform (DFT) networks that compute the 0th bin and all the positive-frequency bin outputs for an N-point DFT in real-time on a sample-by-sample basis. An Even-N...

Find Aliased ADC or DAC Harmonics (with animation)
When a sinewave is applied to a data converter (ADC or DAC), device nonlinearities produce harmonics. If a harmonic frequency is greater than the Nyquist frequency, the harmonic appears as an alias. In this case, it is not at once...

Learn to Use the Discrete Fourier Transform
Discrete-time sequences arise in many ways: a sequence could be a signal captured by an analog-to-digital converter; a series of measurements; a signal generated by a digital modulator; or simply the coefficients of a digital filter. We may wish to know the frequency spectrum of any of these sequences. The most-used tool to accomplish this is the Discrete Fourier Transform (DFT), which computes the discrete frequency spectrum of a discrete-time sequence. The DFT is easily calculated using software, but applying it successfully can be challenging. This article provides Matlab examples of some techniques you can use to obtain useful DFT’s.

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

Overview of my Articles
Introduction This article is a summary of all the articles I've written here at DspRelated. The main focus has always been an increased understanding of the Discrete Fourier Transform (DFT). The references are grouped by topic and ordered in...