Interpolation Archives

Spectrum of the cascade of CIC filters with a wideband compensation filter for rate change factor 10, unit differential delay and 4 stages

November 24, 2022 DSP / Wireless/SDR

Cascaded Integrator Comb (CIC) Filters – A Staircase of DSP

In olden days, people used to have lots of kids. A famous Urdu satirist once wrote: "It has been observed that the last kid is usually the most mischievous of them all. Therefore, there should be no last kid in a family!" I remembered this line today because I have observed that starting a write-up is the most difficult task of them all. Therefore, there is no introductory paragraph in this article. Suffice it to say that this is the only topic I have found that takes you from a very small first step (just two additions) to really advanced

Multiple paths arriving at the Rx with different strengths and delays

May 9, 2022 Localization

Carrier Phase-Based Ranging in Indoor Multipath Channels

Indoor positioning is one of the core technologies behind the idea of Internet of Things (IoT). Some of the use cases are asset tracking and management, factory automation systems, virtual and augmented reality applications, social media relevance and precision marketing in shopping malls. Distances between wireless devices can be determined through various ranging techniques that were introduced in the big picture of localization. Among the candidates, phase based ranging is a low-cost and accurate method that can be implemented on cheap hardware and deployed in real scenarios with relative ease (even in the absence of synchronization among nodes). In this

Linear interpolation between pilot subcarriers

July 18, 2022 Wireless/SDR

Channel Estimation in OFDM Systems

Channel estimation in single-carrier systems has been described in a previous article. In OFDM systems, each subcarrier acts as an independent channel as long as there is no Inter-Carrier Interference (ICI) left in the synchronized signal. The options of both a training sequence and individual pilots are available for channel estimation and the choice between the two depends on time variation rate of the channel as well as the computational complexity. Many systems acquire the channel through the preamble while employ the pilots for channel tracking. The discussion in this article is mostly based on Ref. [1]. For a simplified

June 16, 2023 DSP

3 Ways to Approximate atan2( ) in Hardware

When we think about signal processing, the focus is usually magnitude response of a system. However, in several DSP applications, the signal phase holds as much, if not more, significance as the magnitude response. For example, in digital FM demodulation, carrier phase synchronization and RF ranging, the phase (found through arctangent in four quadrants) of a complex signal needs to be computed by an FPGA or a DSP for further processing. In image processing applications, such an operation is also required to calculate the gradient orientations used in several popular feature descriptors like the Scale-Independent Feature Transform (SIFT) or the

Farrow structure for cubic interpolation

January 11, 2022 DSP

Fractional Delay Filters Using the Farrow Structure

In the discussion on piecewise polynomial interpolation, we emphasized on the fact that the fractional interval $\mu_m$ needs to be updated for each symbol time $mT_M$ and hence the subscript $m$ in $\mu_m$. For this reason, the interpolation process becomes a two-step procedure. Update the filter coefficients $h_p[n]$. Perform the convolution between $z(nT_S)$ and $h_p[n]$. This process can be simplified if the two steps above can be combined in such a way that $\mu_m$ update is weaved into the convolution operation. In other words, instead of a two-input hardware multiplication with two variable quantities, complexity can be reduced by restructuring