FPGA-based Implementation of Signal Processing Systems, 2nd Edition

Preface

DSP and FPGAs

Digital signal processing (DSP) is the cornerstone of many products and services in the digital age. It is used in applications such as high-definition TV, mobile telephony, digital audio, multimedia, digital cameras, radar, sonar detectors, biomedical imaging, global positioning, digital radio, speech recognition, to name but a few! The evolution of DSP solutions has been driven by application requirements which, in turn, have only been possible to realize because of developments in silicon chip technology. Currently, a mix of programmable and dedicated system-on-chip (SoC) solutions are required for these applications and thus this has been a highly active area of research and development over the past four decades.

The result has been the emergence of numerous technologies for DSP implementation, ranging from simple microcontrollers right through to dedicated SoC solutions which form the basis of high-volume products such as smartphones. With the architectural developments that have occurred in field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) over the years, it is clear that they should be considered as a viable DSP technology. Indeed, developments made by FPGA vendors would support this view of their technology. There are strong commercial pressures driving adoption of FPGA technology across a range of applications and by a number of commercial drivers.

The increasing costs of developing silicon technology implementations have put considerable pressure on the ...