
Digital PLL's - Part 2
In Part 1, we found the time response of a 2nd order PLL with a proportional + integral (lead-lag) loop filter. Now let's look at this PLL in the Z-domain.

The Swiss Army Knife of Digital Networks
This article describes a general discrete-signal network that appears, in various forms, inside so many DSP applications.

Digital PLL's -- Part 1
We will use Matlab to model the DPLL in the time and frequency domains (Simulink is also a good tool for modeling a DPLL in the time domain). Part 1 discusses the time domain model; the frequency domain model will be covered in Part 2. The frequency domain model will allow us to calculate the loop filter parameters to give the desired bandwidth and damping, but it is a linear model and cannot predict acquisition behavior. The time domain model can be made almost identical to the gate-level system, and as such, is able to model acquisition.

Decimator Image Response
This article presents a way to compute and plot the image response of a decimator. I'm defining the image response as the unwanted spectrum of the impulse response after downsampling, relative to the desired passband response.

Filter a Rectangular Pulse with no Ringing
To filter a rectangular pulse without any ringing, there is only one requirement on the filter coefficients: they must all be positive. However, if we want the leading and trailing edge of the pulse to be symmetrical, then the coefficients must be symmetrical. What we are describing is basically a window function.

Digital Envelope Detection: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
Recently I've been thinking about the process of envelope detection. Tutorial information on this topic is readily available but that information is spread out over a number of DSP textbooks and many Internet web sites. The purpose of this blog is to summarize various digital envelope detection methods in one place. Here I focus of envelope detection as it is applied to an amplitude-fluctuating sinusoidal signal where the positive-amplitude fluctuations (the sinusoid's envelope) contain some sort of information. Let's begin by looking at the simplest envelope detection method.

Python For Audio Signal Processing
This paper discusses the use of Python for developing audio signal processing applications. Overviews of Python language, NumPy, SciPy and Matplotlib are given, which together form a powerful platform for scientific computing. We then show how SciPy was used to create two audio programming libraries, and describe ways that Python can be integrated with the SndObj library and Pure Data, two existing environments for music composition and signal processing.

Lecture Notes on Elliptic Filter Design
Elliptic filters, also known as Cauer or Zolotarev filters, achieve the smallest filter order for the same specifications, or, the narrowest transition width for the same filter order, as compared to other filter types. On the negative side, they have the most nonlinear phase response over their passband. In these notes, we are primarily concerned with elliptic filters. But we will also discuss briefly the design of Butterworth, Chebyshev-1, and Chebyshev-2 filters and present a unified method of designing all cases. We also discuss the design of digital IIR filters using the bilinear transformation method.

Optimizing the Half-band Filters in Multistage Decimation and Interpolation
This article discusses a not so well-known rule regarding the filtering in multistage decimation and interpolation by an integer power of two.

The DFT Magnitude of a Real-valued Cosine Sequence
This article may seem a bit trivial to some readers here but, then again, it might be of some value to DSP beginners. It presents a mathematical proof of what is the magnitude of an N-point discrete Fourier transform (DFT) when the DFT's input is a real-valued sinusoidal sequence.

Negative Group Delay
Dispersive linear systems with negative group delay have caused much confusion in the past. Some claim that they violate causality, others that they are the cause of superluminal tunneling. Can we really receive messages before they are sent? This article aims at pouring oil in the fire and causing yet more confusion :-).

A Wide-Notch Comb Filter
This article describes a linear-phase comb filter having wider stopband notches than a traditional comb filter.

Using the DFT as a Filter: Correcting a Misconception
I have read, in some of the literature of DSP, that when the discrete Fourier transform (DFT) is used as a filter the process of performing a DFT causes an input signal's spectrum to be frequency translated down to zero Hz (DC). I can understand why someone might say that, but I challenge that statement as being incorrect. Here are my thoughts.

Digital PLL's - Part 2
In Part 1, we found the time response of a 2nd order PLL with a proportional + integral (lead-lag) loop filter. Now let's look at this PLL in the Z-domain.

Python For Audio Signal Processing
This paper discusses the use of Python for developing audio signal processing applications. Overviews of Python language, NumPy, SciPy and Matplotlib are given, which together form a powerful platform for scientific computing. We then show how SciPy was used to create two audio programming libraries, and describe ways that Python can be integrated with the SndObj library and Pure Data, two existing environments for music composition and signal processing.

The Swiss Army Knife of Digital Networks
This article describes a general discrete-signal network that appears, in various forms, inside so many DSP applications.

A Review of Physical and Perceptual Feature Extraction Techniques for Speech, Music and Environmental Sounds
Endowing machines with sensing capabilities similar to those of humans is a prevalent quest in engineering and computer science. In the pursuit of making computers sense their surroundings, a huge effort has been conducted to allow machines and computers to acquire, process, analyze and understand their environment in a human-like way. Focusing on the sense of hearing, the ability of computers to sense their acoustic environment as humans do goes by the name of machine hearing. To achieve this ambitious aim, the representation of the audio signal is of paramount importance. In this paper, we present an up-to-date review of the most relevant audio feature extraction techniques developed to analyze the most usual audio signals: speech, music and environmental sounds. Besides revisiting classic approaches for completeness, we include the latest advances in the field based on new domains of analysis together with novel bio-inspired proposals. These approaches are described following a taxonomy that organizes them according to their physical or perceptual basis, being subsequently divided depending on the domain of computation (time, frequency, wavelet, image-based, cepstral, or other domains). The description of the approaches is accompanied with recent examples of their application to machine hearing related problems.

The DFT of Finite-Length Time-Reversed Sequences
Recently I've been reading papers on underwater acoustic communications systems and this caused me to investigate the frequency-domain effects of time-reversal of time-domain sequences. I created this article because there is so little coverage of this topic in the literature of DSP.

Lecture Notes on Elliptic Filter Design
Elliptic filters, also known as Cauer or Zolotarev filters, achieve the smallest filter order for the same specifications, or, the narrowest transition width for the same filter order, as compared to other filter types. On the negative side, they have the most nonlinear phase response over their passband. In these notes, we are primarily concerned with elliptic filters. But we will also discuss briefly the design of Butterworth, Chebyshev-1, and Chebyshev-2 filters and present a unified method of designing all cases. We also discuss the design of digital IIR filters using the bilinear transformation method.

Algorithm Adaptation and Optimization of a Novel DSP Vector Co-processor
The Division of Computer Engineering at Linköping's university is currently researching the possibility to create a highly parallel DSP platform, that can keep up with the computational needs of upcoming standards for various applications, at low cost and low power consumption. The architecture is called ePUMA and it combines a general RISC DSP master processor with eight SIMD co-processors on a single chip. The master processor will act as the main processor for general tasks and execution control, while the co-processors will accelerate computing intensive and parallel DSP kernels.This thesis investigates the performance potential of the co-processors by implementing matrix algebra kernels for QR decomposition, LU decomposition, matrix determinant and matrix inverse, that run on a single co-processor. The kernels will then be evaluated to find possible problems with the co-processors' microarchitecture and suggest solutions to the problems that might exist. The evaluation shows that the performance potential is very good, but a few problems have been identified, that causes significant overhead in the kernels. Pipeline mismatches, that occurs due to different pipeline lengths for different instructions, causes pipeline hazards and the current solution to this, doesn't allow effective use of the pipeline. In some cases, the single port memories will cause bottlenecks, but the thesis suggests that the situation could be greatly improved by using buffered memory write-back. Also, the lack of register forwarding makes kernels with many data dependencies run unnecessarily slow.