Low-Cost Design of an FIR Filter by Using a Coefficient Mapping Method

Abstract

This work presents a novel coefficient mapping method to reduce the area cost of the finite impulse response (FIR) filter design, especially for optimizing its coefficients. Being capable of reducing the area cost and improving the filter performance, the proposed mapping method consists of four steps: quantization of coefficients, import of parameters, constitution of prime coefficients with parameters, and constitution of residual coefficients with prime coefficients. Effectiveness of the proposed coefficient mapping method is verified by selecting the 48-tap filter of IS-95 code division multiple access (CDMA) standard as the benchmark. Experimental results indicate that the proposed design with canonical signed digit (CSD) coefficients can operate at 86 MHz with an area of 241,813 um2, leading to a throughput rate of 1,382 Mbps. Its ratio of throughput/area is 5,715 Kbps/um2, yielding a higher performance than that of previous designs. In summary, the proposed design reduces 5.7% of the total filter area, shortens 25.7% of the critical path delay, and improves 14.8% of the throughput/area by a value over that of the best design reported before.