Real-Time Signal Processing on Field Programmable Gate Array Hardware

Abstract

Over the last 50 years, advances in high-speed digital signal processing (DSP ) and numerical methods for audio signal processing in general were fueled by the rising processing capabilities of personal computers (PC s). Added to this was the advent of specialized coprocessing platforms like general purpose graphics processing units (GPGPU s), central processing unit (CPU )-based accelerators like Intel's Xeon Phi platforms as well as high-performance digital signal processing (DSP ) chips like Analog Devices' TigerSHARC. Still, there are applications that are not realizable on the mentioned devices in real time or even close to real time. This chapter gives an introduction to field programmable gate array (FPGA ) hardware, a flexible computing platform with massively parallel logic capability that is applicable for problems of high data throughput, high clock rates and high parallelism. After an introduction to the basic structure of FPGAs, several features that enable high-throughput DSP applications are highlighted. An introduction to development platforms as well as the development methodology is given, along with an overview of current FPGA devices and their specific capabilities. Two application examples and an outlook and summary complete this chapter.