The Discrete Fourier Transform as a Frequency Response
The discrete frequency response H(k) of a Finite Impulse Response (FIR) filter is the Discrete Fourier Transform (DFT) of its impulse response h(n) [1]. So, if we can find H(k) by whatever method, it should be identical to the DFT of...
Simple Concepts Explained: Fixed-Point
IntroductionMost signal processing intensive applications on FPGA are still implemented relying on integer or fixed-point arithmetic. It is not easy to find the key ideas on quantization, fixed-point and integer arithmetic. In a series of...
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...
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...
Phase or Frequency Shifter Using a Hilbert Transformer
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.
A Beginner's Guide to OFDM
In the recent past, high data rate wireless communications is often considered synonymous to an Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) system. OFDM is a special case of multi-carrier communication as opposed to a conventional...
Free DSP Books on the Internet
While surfing the "net" I have occasionally encountered signal processing books whose chapters could be downloaded to my computer. I started keeping a list of those books and, over the years, that list has grown to over forty books. Perhaps the...
Goertzel Algorithm for a Non-integer Frequency Index
If you've read about the Goertzel algorithm, you know it's typically presented as an efficient way to compute an individual kth bin result of an N-point discrete Fourier transform (DFT). The integer-valued frequency index k is in the range of...
Why Time-Domain Zero Stuffing Produces Multiple Frequency-Domain Spectral Images
This blog explains why, in the process of time-domain interpolation (sample rate increase), zero stuffing a time sequence with zero-valued samples produces an increased-length time sequence whose spectrum contains replications of the original...
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...
Coupled-Form 2nd-Order IIR Resonators: A Contradiction Resolved
This blog clarifies how to obtain and interpret the z-domain transfer function of the coupled-form 2nd-order IIR resonator. The coupled-form 2nd-order IIR resonator was developed to overcome a shortcoming in the standard 2nd-order IIR resonator....
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...
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...
Polyphase Filters and Filterbanks
ALONG CAME POLY Polyphase filtering is a computationally efficient structure for applying resampling and filtering to a signal. Most digital filters can be applied in a polyphase format, and it is also possible to create efficient resampling...






