Real-Time Digital Signal Processing: Based on the TMS320C6000

CHAPTER 1

Introduction

In general, sensors generate analog signals in response to various physical phenomena that occur in an analog manner (i.e., in continuous time and amplitude). Processing of signals can be done either in analog or digital domain. To do the processing of an analog signal in digital domain, it is required that a digital signal is formed by sampling and quantizing (digitizing) the analog signal. Hence, in contrast to an analog signal, a digital signal is discrete in both time and amplitude. The digitization process is achieved via an analog-to-digital (A/D) converter.

Digital signal processing (DSP) involves the manipulation of digital signals in order to extract useful information from them. Although an increasing amount of signal processing is being done in digital domain, there remains the need for interfacing to the analog world in which we live. Analog-to-digital (A/D) and digital-to-analog (D/A) data converters are the devices that make this interfacing possible. Figure 1-1 illustrates the main components of a DSP system, consisting of A/D, DSP, and D/A devices.

Figure 1-1 Main components of a DSP system

There are many reasons why one would want to process an analog signal in a digital fashion by converting it into a digital signal. The main reason is that digital processing allows programmability. The same DSP hardware can be used for many different applications by simply changing the code residing in memory. Another reason is that digital circuits provide a more stable and tolerant output than analog circuits·for instance, when subjected to temperature changes. In addition, the advantage of operating in digital domain may be intrinsic. For example, a linear phase filter or a steep-cutoff notch filter can only be realized by using digital signal processing techniques, and many adaptive systems are achievable in a practical product only via digital manipulation of signals. In essence, digital representation (0s and 1s) allows voice, audio, image, and video data to be treated the same for error-tolerant digital transmission and storage purposes. As a result, digital processing, and hence digital signal processors (also called DSPs), are expected to play a major role in the next generation of telecommunication infrastructure including 3G (third generation) wireless, cable (cable modems), and telephone lines (digital subscriber line – DSL modems).

The processing of a digital signal can be implemented on various platforms such as a DSP processor, a customized very large scale integrated (VLSI) circuit, or a general-purpose microprocessor. Some of the differences between a DSP and a single function VLSI implementation are as follows:

1. There is a fair amount of application flexibility associated with DSP implementation, since the same DSP hardware can be utilized for different applications. In other words, DSP processors are programmable. This is not the case for a hardwired digital circuit.

2. DSP processors are cost-effective because they are mass-produced and can be used for many applications. A customized VLSI chip normally gets built for a single application and a specific customer.

3. In many situations, new features constitute a software upgrade on a DSP processor not requiring new hardware. In addition, bug fixes are generally easier to make.

4. Often very high sampling rates can be achieved by a customized chip, whereas there are sampling rate limitations associated with DSP chips due to their peripheral constraints and architecture design.

DSP processors share some common characteristics that also separate them from general-purpose microprocessors. Some of these characteristics include the following:

1. They are optimized to cope with repetition or looping of operations common in signal processing algorithms. Relatively speaking, instruction sets of DSPs are smaller and optimized for signal processing operations, such as single-cycle multiplication and accumulation.

2. DSPs allow specialized addressing modes, like indirect and circular addressing. These are efficient addressing mechanisms for implementing many signal processing algorithms.

3. DSPs possess appropriate peripherals that allow efficient input/output (I/O) interfacing to other devices.

4. In DSP processors, it is possible to perform several accesses to memory in a single instruction cycle. In other words, these processors have a relatively high bandwidth between their central processing units (CPUs) and memory.

It should be kept in mind that due to the constant evolving of features being placed on processors, one needs to be cautious of features dividing DSPs and general-purpose microprocessors.

Most of the market share of DSPs belong to real-time, cost-effective, embedded systems, for example, cellular phones, modems, and disk drives. Real-time means completing the processing within the allowable or available time between samples. This available time, of course, depends on the application. As illustrated in Figure 1-2, the number of instructions to have an algorithm running in real-time must be less than the number of instructions that can be executed between two consecutive samples. For example, for audio processing operating at 44.1 kHz sampling frequency, or approximately 22.6 μs sampling time interval, the number of instructions must be fewer than nearly 4500, assuming an instruction cycle time of 5 ns. There are two aspects of real-time processing: (a) sampling rate, and (b) system latencies (delays). Typical sampling rates and latencies for several different applications are shown in Table 1-1.

Table 1-1

Typical sampling rates and latencies for select applications.

*In many cases, one may not need to be concerned with latency, for example, a TV signal is more dependent on synchronization with audio than the latency. In each of these cases, the latency is dependent on the application.

Figure 1-2 Maximum number of instructions to meet real-time = time between samples/instruction cycle time

1.1 Examples of DSP Systems

For the reader to appreciate the usefulness of DSPs, several examples of DSP systems currently in use are presented here.

During the past few years, there has been a tremendous growth in the wireless market. Figure 1-3 illustrates a cellular phone wireless communication DSP system. As can be seen from this figure, there are two sets of data converters. On the voice band side, a low sampling rate (for example, 8 kSPS [kilo samples per second]) and a high resolution (for example, 13 bits) converter is used, whereas on the RF modulation side, a relatively high-speed (for example, 20 MSPS) and a low resolution (for example, 8 bits) converter is used. System designers prefer to integrate more functionalities in DSP rather than in analog components in order to lower the number of components and hence the overall cost. This strategy of more integration in DSP depends on specifications achievable for low power consumption in portable devices.

Figure 1-3 Cellular phone wireless communication DSP system

In wired communications, various types of modems are used to convert analog/digital signals to digital signals appropriate for error-tolerant transmission over wires or cables. Currently, available modem types include: high-speed voiceband (56 kbps [kilo bits per second]), integrated services digital network (ISDN), DSL, and cable modems. For example, DSL type modems have data rates in the range of 1-52 Mbps. DSL makes use of the existing twisted-pair wires between residential homes and the phone company’s central office. For example, the asymmetric version of DSL (ADSL) uses the frequency range 25-138 kHz for upstream and 200 kHz-1.1 MHz for downstream data transmission, without interfering with the existing 0-4 kHz voiceband range. Figure 1-4 shows an ADSL system based on the TI data converters and DSP products. The indicated A/D and D/A converters have a high-speed, high-resolution specification to cope with the multilevel nature of the transmitted signal. The transceiver is a dedicated DSP performing the ADSL modulation/demodulation.

Figure 1-4 TI chipset for ADSL wired communication DSP system

Considering that communication networks in use today are digital, an analog signal reaching the phone company central office must be conditioned and converted to a digital signal for transmission through the network. Figure 1-5 shows the pulse code modulation (PCM) voiceband codec used in communications networks. As can be seen, a fair amount of the signal processing is done in digital domain by the DSP component.

Figure 1-5 PCM voiceband DSP system

Figure 1-6 shows a gigabit Ethernet DSP system. The analog signal is sent through category-5 twisted-pair wires. Four 8-bit, high-speed A/D converters are used for data conversion. The dynamic range of the converters must be high enough to overcome noise, interference, and attenuation through an Ethernet link. A DSP is then used to do echo cancellation, equalization, and demodulation signal processing.

Figure 1-6 Gigabit Ethernet DSP system

Data stored on a compact disc (CD) or a computer hard drive is in binary format. However, the signal generated by a read head is analog and corrupted by noise and distortion. This demands a fair amount of signal conditioning and filtering after reading data. As shown in Figure 1-7, this is achieved by using a DSP-based hard disk drive