Interpolator Design: Get the Stopbands Right
In this article, I present a simple approach for designing interpolators that takes the guesswork out of determining the stopbands.
Return of the Delta-Sigma Modulators, Part 1: Modulation
About a decade ago, I wrote two articles: Modulation Alternatives for the Software Engineer (November 2011) Isolated Sigma-Delta Modulators, Rah Rah Rah! (April 2013) Each of these are about delta-sigma modulation, but they’re...
Simple Discrete-Time Modeling of Lossy LC Filters
There are many software applications that allow modeling LC filters in the frequency domain. But sometimes it is useful to have a time domain model, such as when you need to analyze a mixed analog and DSP system. For example, the...
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 Beginner's Guide To Cascaded Integrator-Comb (CIC) Filters
This article discusses the behavior, mathematics, and implementation of cascaded integrator-comb filters.
Understanding and Relating Eb/No, SNR, and other Power Efficiency Metrics
Introduction Evaluating the performance of communication systems, and wireless systems in particular, usually involves quantifying some performance metric as a function of Signal-to-Noise-Ratio (SNR) or some similar measurement. Many systems...
FFT Interpolation Based on FFT Samples: A Detective Story With a Surprise Ending
This blog presents several interesting things I recently learned regarding the estimation of a spectral value located at a frequency lying between previously computed FFT spectral samples. My curiosity about this FFT interpolation process was triggered by reading a spectrum analysis paper written by three astronomers.
Minimum Shift Keying (MSK) - A Tutorial
Minimum Shift Keying (MSK) is one of the most spectrally efficient modulation schemes available. Due to its constant envelope, it is resilient to non-linear distortion and was therefore chosen as the modulation technique for the GSM cell phone...
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...
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...
A Fixed-Point Introduction by Example
Introduction The finite-word representation of fractional numbers is known as fixed-point. Fixed-point is an interpretation of a 2's compliment number usually signed but not limited to sign representation. It...
An Interesting Fourier Transform - 1/f Noise
Power law functions are common in science and engineering. A surprising property is that the Fourier transform of a power law is also a power law. But this is only the start- there are many interesting features that soon become apparent. This may...
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.
