High Speed and Low Power FPGA Implementation of FIR Filter for DSP Applications

Amit Raj
B.Tech, ECE, SASTRA University, Thanjavur, Tamil Nadu - 613401 E-mail: amit262971@gmail.com

Abstract
Signal processing ranks among the most demanding applications of digital design concepts and practices. It is a mature technology domain wherein the demands for enhanced performance and reduced resource utilization have risen exponentially over the years. Recent advancements in Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) design technology, has resulted in FPGA(s) becoming the preferred platform for evaluating and implementing signal processing algorithms. Special features of the FPGA architecture, like embedded multipliers, fast carry chains, scalability and re-configurability make it a very attractive platform for complex signal processing algorithms. Digital Signal Processing (DSP) deals with the manipulation of digital signals using complex signal processing systems built from basic building blocks like filters and signal transformations. The advent of engineering tools like MATLAB has enabled the design of these basic building blocks faster and more accurate. This document provides a brief discourse on the effective application of VLSI design methodologies for efficient implementation of these basic DSP blocks, using an FIR Filter and the Fast Fourier Transform as specific cases.

1. Introduction
A filter is used to modify an input signal in order to facilitate further processing. A digital filter works on a digital input (a sequence of numbers, resulting from sampling and quantizing an analog signal) and produces a digital output. According to Dr. U. Meyer-Baese the most common digital filter is the Linear TimeInvariant (LTI) filter. Designing an LTI involves arriving at the filter coefficients which, in turn, represents the impulse response of the proposed filter design. These coefficients, in linear convolution with the input sequence will result in the desired output. The linear convolution process can be represented as:

Here, y[n] signifies the output of the filter and x[n] is the digital input to the filter. The impulse response of the filter is given by f*k+ and the operator * denotes the convolution operation. It can be seen that the extent of the summation is governed by k, which denotes the extent of the impulse response of the filter. Therefore, if the filter has an infinite impulse response, the summation extends to infinity and the filter is said to be an Infinite Impulse Response (IIR) filter. A filter with a finite value for k is said to be a Finite Impulse Response (FIR) filter. It can be inferred that the output of an FIR filter remains dependant only on the inputs and the coefficients. Therefore, the FIR filter detailed above is an LTI filter [2]. Equation (1.1) can be re-written as follows, for an order of L, as follows:

Figure 1: shows the schematic of an FIR filter of order L.

Calculating the constant coefficients of such a digital filter involves considerable amount of computation and this is generally performed using software tools. The Filter Design and Analysis (FDA) tool packaged along with MATLAB is such a tool. The coefficients of an FIR filter, as mentioned earlier, denote the impulse response of the filter. It is imperative for any system implementation of such a filter to use a number format that represents the coefficients to as much precision as allowed by the resource constraints. The double length floating point notation for filter coefficients, used by the FDA tool poses immense challenges in terms of cost and resources, while implementing on an FPGA. To overcome this, the filter coefficients have to be quantized to a fixed point notation, resulting in the introduction of a certain amount of imprecision. This chapter details the process of designing filters and analyzing the effects of coefficient quantization on the overall response using the MATLAB FDA tool. Hardware description for the filter implementation is generated in Verilog HDL and simulations of the hardware description are performed using ModelSim.

2. Designing Digital FIR Filters Using FDA Tool

The Filter Design and Analysis Tool (FDA Tool) is a graphical user interface (GUI) available in the Signal Processing Toolbox of MATLAB for designing and analyzing filters. It takes the filter Specifications as inputs. Table 1 shows the specifications of an FIR low pass equiripple filter. Table 1: FIR filter specifications Filter performance parameter Pass band frequency Pass band attenuation Stop band frequency Stop band attenuation Sampling frequency Value 11000 Hz 3 dB 12000 Hz 65 dB 48000

The sampling frequency is chosen as 4 times the stop band and the filter has a steep transition band with a width of 1000 Hz. These specifications are fed as inputs to the FDA tool in MATLAB R2006b. The tool performs the filter design calculations using double precision floating point numeric representation and displays the response of a reference filter. Figure 2 shows the filter design window of FDA tool, after completion of the design process.

Figure 2: Filter design using MATLAB FDA tool

The designed filter is of order 84. It must be noted that the FDA Tool uses double precision floating point representation for the design calculations. This allows the tool to achieve a fair degree of precision, which is reflected in the close-to-ideal response of the reference filter. Figure 3 shows the response of the reference filter, in detail. Specifications of the filter, namely, pass band, stop band, transition band, pass band ripple and stop band ripple are denoted in the screen shot. Figure 3: Response of the reference filter

The response shown is calculated from 0 Hz (DC) up to 24000 Hz, which is half of the sampling frequency specified (FS / 2). The pass band response ripples with 0 dB as centre and the stop band ripples are all below 65dB in magnitude. The filter has a steep transition band starting at 11000 Hz, achieving stop band attenuation at 12000 Hz.

2.1. Effects of finite word length

The accuracy of a digital filter is limited by the finite word length used in its implementation. When a filter is constructed with digital hardware, the minimum word length needed for specified performance accuracy must be determined [DeBrunner, 2002]. An ideal filter requires infinite word length to truly represent the filter coefficients. However, the resource constraints associated with hardware implementation pose the challenge of using fixed point arithmetic in VLSI implementations, for the sake of cost and speed. The simplest and most widely used approach to the problem is to round off the optimal infinite precision coefficients to a bbit representation [Sung and Kum, 1995]. Two such formats namely, Q 16.14 and Q8.7 are considered to analyze the effects of varying the word length while quantizing the filter coefficients. The transfer function of a direct form FIR filter is given by:

As a result of the fixed point finite word length used in a digital filter, each coefficient is replaced by its t-bit representation. That is, the coefficient ak is replaced by (ak + k), with k bounded in absolute value by 2b. Similarly, bk is replaced by (bk + k), Therefore, the filter transfer function changes. The new transfer function [H (z)]t is given by [DeBrunner, 2002]:

2.2. Quantization to Q16.14 format

Using the FDA Tool, the reference filter is quantized to a Q16.14 fixed point numeric representation format [Hu, DeBrunner & DeBrunner, 2002 and Lim, Yang, Li, and Song, 1999]. This means that the total word length is 16 bits, out of which the most significant bit (MSB) is used to represent the sign of the number, the next bit for representing the non-fractional magnitude and the remaining the fractional magnitude. Table 2 illustrates this distribution in detail. Table 2: Numeric representation format Q16.14 - Bit distribution

Here, S denotes the sign bit, M denotes the non fractional magnitude and MF denotes the fractional magnitude. After applying the aforesaid quantization to the filter coefficients, the response of the filter is compared against that of the reference filter (which uses double precision floating point representation). Figure 4 shows the response of the filter after quantizing the coefficients to Q16.14 format.

Figure 4: FIR filter response after coefficient quantization to Q16.14

The quantized filter has larger ripples than the reference filter. This is explained by the fact that the coefficients have lost some amount of precision while being quantized from a double precision floating point representation to the Q16.14 format. As established by equation 1.2, any change in the precision of the filter coefficients (F[k]) will have a direct bearing on the output of the filter.

2.3. Quantization to Q8.7 format

A larger effect of coefficient quantization can be observed for the representation format Q8.7. Here, the total word length is 8 bits and the number of bits available for representing the fractional magnitude is 7. Table 3 illustrates this distribution in detail.

Table 3: Numeric representation format Q16.14 - Bit distribution

Here, S denotes the sign bit, M denotes the non fractional magnitude and MF denotes the fractional magnitude. After quantizing the filter coefficients to Q8.7 format, the response of the filter is compared with the reference filter. Figure 5 shows the response of the filter after quantizing coefficients to Q8.7 format. The pass band response is relatively unaffected by the quantization. However, the difference is drastic in the stop band response of the quantized filter. This is due to the substantial loss of precision as a result of quantization to the sub-optimal Q8.7 format. Table 4 shows the effect of quantization on the values of the first 4 filter coefficients.

Figure 5: FIR filter response after coefficient quantization to Q8.7

Table 4: Effect of quantization on filter coefficients

Note: *The values of filter coefficients after quantization have been exported from FDA tool

2.4. Hardware Implementation - Generating Verilog HDL Code

The major challenge in implementing a higher order filter in hardware is the large number of multiplications. During HDL generation from FDA Tool, instructions can be given to optimize the HDL by using a variety of techniques like pipelining and distributed arithmetic. The FDA tool allows the user to generate test benches to analyze the response of the filter to a variety of test input patterns. The HDL code for the filter designed in the previous section is generated using FDA Tool, with multipliers implemented in pipelined tree architecture. HDL code and test benches (for unit impulse response) are generated for both the quantized versions (Q16.14 and Q8.7). The initial portion of the simulation results for FIR filter with coefficients quantized to Q16.14 format is shown in Figure 6.

Figure 6: Simulation results for Q16.14 FIR filter Initial portion

An impulse input is applied to the filter at time 45ns (this is when the system comes out of reset). The filter starts responding at time 200ns (after 155ns). The response sequence starts with the first filter coefficient and goes on till time 1900ns, with 84 coefficients coming out as response. Note that the output is 32 bit wide. The last signal displayed is the iteration counter (n) that shows the order of the coefficient being output. Figure 7 shows the final portion of the output, showing the end of the impulse response at time 1900ns.

Figure 7: Simulation results for Q16.14 FIR filter Final portion

The approach for the Q8.7 filter is just the same and results obtained are also similar. Here, the output is 16 bits wide. Figure 8 shows the response of the FIR filter with coefficients quantized to Q8.7 format.

Figure 8: Simulation results for Q16.14 FIR filter

3. Methods to Reduce the Effect of Fixed Word Length

Figure 9: Relationship between , N and b *Kodek, 1980+

3.1. Integer Programming

The effect of fixing the word length used to represent the coefficients of a digital FIR filter of order N, can be minimized by using an optimum number of bits b to represent the N coefficients of the filter by using integer programming techniques. According to Dusan M. Kodek, Using the approximate design formula for optimal infinite-precision low-pass FIR filters and a statistical upper bound for error caused by the rounding, it is possible to get an approximate relationship between deviation , number of coefficients N, and coefficient word length b. *Kodek, 1980+ This relationship between , N and b is obtained experimentally upon optimal finite word length low-pass FIR filters defined by equations (1.5) and (1.6), and for the equivalent filters with rounded coefficients. Figure 9 details the relationship: Pass band response D(f) = 1, Positive weight function W(f) = 1, 0 <f< 0.20 (1.5) Stop band response D(f) = 0, Positive weight function W(f) = 1, 0.25 <f< 0.5. (1.6) It can be seen that the response for optimal and rounded coefficients are very close. The difference between the optimal and rounded coefficients multiplied by 2(b-1) is never greater than 4 for all N between 6 and 40 and all b between 3 and 15. This shows that there is an optimal number of bits b for each value of Nb. [Kodek, 1980].

3.2. Word Length Optimization

This is an iterative and qualitative method to arrive at the optimum word length based on a specified system performance. The net-list of a signal flow block diagram is pre processed to group the signals that can have the same fixed-point attributes in order to minimize the number of variables for the optimization. The grouping strategy should be to group signals connected by a delay, a multiplexer, or a switch or input-output signals of an adder etc. Based on the range of each signal, a uniform word length is assigned to each group. Next step is to obtain a minimum word-length for each group, i.e., the smallest word-length that satisfies the fixed-point performance of the system. The word length that has the minimum hardware cost and still satisfies the specified system performance criteria, is chosen. [Sung and Kum, 1995]

3.3. Cascade or Parallel Realization for Higher Order Filters

In general, the effect of coefficient inaccuracy resulting from finite word length fixed point representation is more pronounced for a high-order filter when it is realized in the direct form than when it is realized in the parallel or cascade form. Therefore, the parallel or cascade form should be used for high-order filters whenever possible. The saving in the number of coefficient bits can be quite substantial. [DeBrunner, 2002]

4. Conclusion
Using powerful computer based software tools to perform redundant calculations in the filter design process enables a designer to arrive at the best design within the shortest time. While implementing a filter on hardware, the biggest challenge is to achieve specified system performance at minimum hardware cost. One among the hurdles is to understand, estimate and overcome where possible, the effects of using a finite word length to represent the infinite word length coefficients. Selecting a non-optimized word length can result in the filter transfer function being different from what is expected. The effects of using finite word length representation can be minimized by analytical or qualitative methods or simply by choosing to implement higher order filters in cascaded or parallel form. High Speed and Low Power FPGA Implementation of FIR Filter for DSP Applications

References
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