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 :-).

Implementing Simultaneous Digital Differentiation, Hilbert Transformation, and Half-Band Filtering

Recently I've been thinking about digital differentiator and Hilbert transformer implementations and I've developed a processing scheme that may be of interest to the readers here on dsprelated.com.

A New Contender in the Digital Differentiator Race

This blog proposes a novel differentiator worth your consideration. Although simple, the differentiator provides a fairly wide 'frequency range of linear operation' and can be implemented, if need be, without performing numerical multiplications.

The World's Most Interesting FIR Filter Equation: Why FIR Filters Can Be Linear Phase

This article discusses a little-known filter characteristic that enables real- and complex-coefficient tapped-delay line FIR filters to exhibit linear phase behavior. That is, this article answers the question: What is the constraint on real- and complex-valued FIR filters that guarantee linear phase behavior in the frequency domain?

Correcting an Important Goertzel Filter Misconception

Correcting an Important Goertzel Filter Misconception

Complex Down-Conversion Amplitude Loss

This article illustrates the signal amplitude loss inherent in a traditional complex down-conversion system. (In the literature of signal processing, complex down-conversion is also called "quadrature demodulation.")

Convolution DSP tutorial

Tutorial on convolution and basic DSP.

Specifying the Maximum Amplifier Noise When Driving an ADC

I recently learned an interesting rule of thumb regarding the use of an amplifier to drive the input of an analog to digital converter (ADC). The rule of thumb describes how to specify the maximum allowable noise power of the amplifier.

Towards Efficient and Robust Automatic Speech Recognition: Decoding Techniques and Discriminative Training

Automatic speech recognition has been widely studied and is already being applied in everyday use. Nevertheless, the recognition performance is still a bottleneck in many practical applications of large vocabulary continuous speech recognition. Either the recognition speed is not sufficient, or the errors in the recognition result limit the applications. This thesis studies two aspects of speech recognition, decoding and training of acoustic models, to improve speech recognition performance in different conditions.

Adaptive Algorithms in Digital Signal Processing - Overview, Theory and Applications

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.

Introduction to Sound Processing

Audio signal processing with MATLAB and Octave code examples.

Implementation of a Tx/Rx OFDM System in a FPGA

The aim of this project consists in the FPGA design and implementation of a transmitter and receiver (Tx/Rx) multicarrier system such the Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM). This Tx/Rx OFDM subsystem is capable to deal with with different M-QAM modulations and is implemented in a digital signal processor (DSP-FPGA). The implementation of the Tx/Rx subsystem has been carried out in a FPGA using both System Generator visual programming running over Matlab/Simulink, and the Xilinx ISE program which uses VHDL language. This project is divided into four chapters, each one with a concrete objective. The first chapter is a brief introduction to the digital signal processor used, a field-programmable gate array (FPGA), and to the VHDL programming language. The second chapter is an overview on OFDM, its main advantages and disadvantages in front of previous systems, and a brief description of the different blocks composing the OFDM system. Chapter three provides the implementation details for each of these blocks, and also there is a brief explanation on the theory behind each of the OFDM blocks to provide a better comprehension on its implementation. The fourth chapter is focused, on the one hand, in showing the results of the Matlab/Simulink simulations for the different simulation schemes used and, on the other hand, to show the experimental results obtained using the FPGA to generate the OFDM signal at baseband and then upconverted at the frequency of 3,5 GHz. Finally the conclusions regarding the whole Tx/Rx design and implementation of the OFDM subsystem are given.

Sinusoidal Frequency Estimation Based on Time-Domain Samples

The topic of estimating a noise-free real or complex sinusoid's frequency, based on fast Fourier transform (FFT) samples, has been presented in recent blogs here on dsprelated.com. For completeness, it's worth knowing that simple frequency estimation algorithms exist that do not require FFTs to be performed . Below I present three frequency estimation algorithms that use time-domain samples, and illustrate a very important principle regarding so called "exact" mathematically-derived DSP algorithms.

Peak-to-Average Power Ratio and CCDF

Peak to Average Power Ratio (PAPR) is often used to characterize digitally modulated signals. One example application is setting the level of the signal in a digital modulator. Knowing PAPR allows setting the average power to a level that is just low enough to minimize clipping.

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.

Generating Complex Baseband and Analytic Bandpass Signals

There are so many different time- and frequency-domain methods for generating complex baseband and analytic bandpass signals that I had trouble keeping those techniques straight in my mind. Thus, for my own benefit, I created a kind of reference table showing those methods. I present that table for your viewing pleasure in this document.

How Discrete Signal Interpolation Improves D/A Conversion

Earlier this year, for the Linear Audio magazine, published in the Netherlands whose subscribers are technically-skilled hi-fi audio enthusiasts, I wrote an article on the fundamentals of interpolation as it's used to improve the performance of analog-to-digital conversion. Perhaps that article will be of some value to the subscribers of dsprelated.com. Here's what I wrote: We encounter the process of digital-to-analog conversion every day—in telephone calls (land lines and cell phones), telephone answering machines, CD & DVD players, iPhones, digital television, MP3 players, digital radio, and even talking greeting cards. This material is a brief tutorial on how sample rate conversion improves the quality of digital-to-analog conversion.

Method to Calculate the Inverse of a Complex Matrix using Real Matrix Inversion

This paper describes a simple method to calculate the invers of a complex matrix. The key element of the method is to use a matrix inversion, which is available and optimised for real numbers. Some actual libraries used for digital signal processing only provide highly optimised methods to calculate the inverse of a real matrix, whereas no solution for complex matrices are available, like in [1]. The presented algorithm is very easy to implement, while still much more efficient than for example the method presented in [2]. [1] Visual DSP++ 4.0 C/C++ Compiler and Library Manual for TigerSHARC Processors; Analog Devices; 2005. [2] W. Press, S.A. Teukolsky, W.T. Vetterling, B.R. Flannery; Numerical Recipes in C++, The art of scientific computing, Second Edition; p52 : “Complex Systems of Equations”;Cambridge University Press 2002.

Efficient Digital Fiilters

What would you do in the following situation? Let ’ s say you are diagnosing a DSP system problem in the field. You have your trusty laptop with your development system and an emulator. You figure out that there was a problem with the system specifications and a symmetric FIR filter in the software won ’ t do the job; it needs reduced passband ripple, or maybe more stopband attenuation. You then realize you don ’ t have any filter design software on the laptop, and the customer is getting angry. The answer is easy: You can take the existing filter and sharpen it. Simply stated, filter sharpening is a technique for creating a new filter from an old one [1] – [3] . While the technique is almost 30 years old, it is not generally known by DSP engineers nor is it mentioned in most DSP textbooks.