International Journal of Advanced Engineering Research and Technology (IJAERT), ISSN: 23488190

th
st
ICRTIET-2014 Conference Proceeding, 30 -31 August 2014

Design Analysis of Word Length Effects in Interpolator Design

1

Ankita Mahajan, Rajesh Mehra

1
2
ME Scholar & Associate Professor
Department of Electronics & Communication Engineering
National Institute of Technical Teachers Training & Research
Chandigarh, UT, India

ABSTRACT
Digital filters are implemented using finite word lengths
for input, output and the filter coefficients. Errors are
caused by the use of finite word length such as noise
generation in analog-to-digital conversion, coefficient
quantization errors etc. In this paper FIR interpolator is
designed and simulated using different word lengths
with equiripple technique. Three different precisions are
used for input, output and coefficients. The performance
of interpolator with different precisions has been
analyzed and compared with each other. It can be
observed from the stimulated results that the output
response of designed interpolator becomes closer to the
desired response by increasing the precision bits.

signal into a more suitable form [1]. Digital signal

processing provides advantages such as:- guaranteed
accuracy, perfect reproducibility, no drift in
performance, greater flexibility, superior performance,
DSP is also suited for low frequency signals.
Application areas

Key Words: Equiripple, FIR Interpolator, Word length

Application areas include the following: Image

processing, Instrumentation/Control, Speech/Audio,
Military, Telecommunication, Biomedical, Consumer
applications. Some of the key DSP operations are DSP
operations require only simple arithmetic operations of
multiply, add/subtract, and shift to carry out. The basic
DSP operations are:- Convolution, Correlation, Filtering,
Transformation, Modulation.

I. INTRODUCTION

II. MULTIRATE SYSTEMS

Signals play a major role in our life. A signal can be a

function of time, distance, position, temperature,
pressure etc. By a signal we mean any variable that
carries some kind of information for example:-

One of the major function of DSP is filtering . Filters are

networks that change the wave shape, amplitudefrequency or phase characteristics of a signal in a desired
manner. The main role of filter is to improve the quality
of signal and to extract the information from signals.
Digital filters are classified as finite duration impulse
response filter i.e. FIR and infinite duration impulse
response filter i.e. IFIR. In this paper we have done the
design analysis based on FIR filter. So a FIR filter is a
filter whose impulse response sequence is of finite
duration which means it has a finite number of non-zero
terms [2]. FIR filter depends only on the present and past
input samples. FIR filter has following advantages:- they
have linear phase, they are stable, they can be realized
efficiently in hardware.

In an electrical system the associated signals are electric

current and voltage. In a mechanical system the
associated signals may be force, speed, torque etc. In
daily life we encounter signals such as speech, music,
picture and video.
Digital signal processing is concerned with the digital
representation of signals and the use of digital processors
to analyze, modify, or extract information from signals.
Most signals are analog in nature often meaning that
they vary continually with time. The signals used in
most popular forms of DSP are derived from analog
signals which have been sampled at regular intervals and
converted into a digital form.
The specific reason for processing a digital signal may
be to remove interference or noise from the signal, to
obtain the spectrum of the data, or to transform the

FIR filter coefficients can be calculated using the

window method. But the window method does not
correspond to any known form of optimization. In fact it
can be shown that the window method is not optimal by which we mean it does not produce the lowest
possible number of filter coefficients that just meets the
requirement. Remez Exchange algorithm is something

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International Journal of Advanced Engineering Research and Technology (IJAERT), ISSN: 23488190
th
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ICRTIET-2014 Conference Proceeding, 30 -31 August 2014

clever. It uses a mathematical optimization method. The

Remez/Parks McLellan method produces a filter which
just meets the specification without over performing.
Many of the window method designs actually perform
better as you move further away from the pass band, this
is wasted performance, and means they are using more
filter coefficients than they need. Similarly, many of the
window method designs actually perform better than the
specification within the pass band: this is also wasted
performance, and means they are using more filter
coefficients than they need. The Remez/Parks McLellan
method performs just as well as the specification but no
better: one might say it produces the worst possible
design that just meets the specification at the lowest
possible cost - almost a definition of practical
engineering. So Remez/Parks McLellan designs have
equal ripple - up to the specification but no more - in
both pass band and stop band. This is why they are often
called equiripple designs. The equiripple design
produces the most efficient filters - that is, filters that
just meet the specification with the least number of
coefficients.
Need of multirate processing
The increasing need in modern digital system to process
data at more than one sampling rate has led to the
development of multirate processing [1]. The two
primary operations in multirate processing are
decimation and interpolation. Decimation reduces the
sampling rate, thus compressing the data and retaining
only the desired information. For example, if 16-bit
compact disc audio (sampled at 44,100 Hz) is decimated
to 22,050 Hz, the audio is said to be decimated by a
factor of 2 [3]. These are also required in applications
where the storage size has to be reduced. Decimator can
be called as anti-aliasing filter. Interpolation increases
the sampling rate. Example is where high precision
signals are required. This can also be called as antiimaging filter. Advantages of multirate processing are
many, like high quality data acquisition and storage
system are increasingly taking its advantage in order to
avoid the use of expensive anti-aliasing analog filters
and to handle efficiently signals of different bandwidth
which require different sampling frequencies.
Multirate processing is basically an efficient technique
for changing the sampling frequency of a signal digitally
[1]. The processes of decimation and interpolation are
the fundamental operations in multirate signal
processing, and they allow the sampling frequency to be
decreased or increased without significant undesirable

effects of errors such as quantization and aliasing. In this

paper FIR filter has been used, as performance of a
multirate system depends critically on the type and
quality of the filter used. So selection of FIR filter is
done on the basis of its above mentioned advantages.
Also it is required that anti-imaging filter must remove
all but the useful information by bandlimiting the
modified data to Fs/2 or less. Although the highest valid
frequency after raising the rate to LFs is LFs/2, according
to the sampling theorem, it is necessary to bandlimit to
Fs/2 as this is the highest valid frequency in x(n). The
overall filter requirements for interpolation are:
Pass band : 0 f fP
Stop band : FS/2 f LFS/2 Pass band deviation: P
Stop band deviation: S [1]
Where fp< Fs/2 a gain of L is necessary in the pass band
to compensate for the amplitude reduction by the
interpolation process.
We know that digital filters are implemented using finite
word lengths for both the data and the filter coefficients.
The main errors caused by the use of finite word length
are as follows: Noise generated in the analog-to-digital
conversion, resulting from representing the samples of
the input data by only a few bits. Coefficient
quantization errors, caused by representing the filter
coefficients by a finite number of bits. In this paper word
length effect is considered using fixed point arithmetic.
Here we consider only filters where both the coefficients
and data samples are given using a fixed point
representation. In this case each data sample is
represented by a sign bit and b decimal bits and it is
required that inside the filter all the data samples are
within the range [-1, 1]. For the coefficients some
integer bits are sometimes required. Fixed-point
conversion and word length optimization has a long
history of research. In a fixed-point representation,
integer bits are related to the dynamic range of a signal
and fractional bits are related to precision. For
determining the optimal number of both integer and
fractional bits, analytical or simulation-based methods
have been introduced.
Some published approaches to the word length
optimization problem use an analytic approach to scaling
and/or error estimation [4]-[6], some use simulation [7,
8], and some use a hybrid of the two [9]. In this paper
effect of word length is analyzed by varying the inputoutput word length and coefficient length. By varying
the word length it is found that there is a reduction in the

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International Journal of Advanced Engineering Research and Technology (IJAERT), ISSN: 23488190
th
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ICRTIET-2014 Conference Proceeding, 30 -31 August 2014

noise as the word length increases. Also filter order is

taken into consideration so that the hardware
implementation of the filter is not hindered while
increasing the word length. As order of the filter plays a
very important role in the cost efficiency of the filter.

Now we will analyze the response at word length 32

III. INTERPOLATOR SIMULATIONS

Let us take the FIR equiripple filter of minimum order
and then interpolate by a factor of 2. Now analyze the
word length effect on this filter. The analysis will be
done through Matlab.
Now for word length 8 the following response is shown
through Matlab simulation.
Fig. 3 FIR Interpolator response when word length=32
This shows that the stop band attenuation affect has
become constant and is not changing anymore.
Thus from the above analysis it is clear that for a
minimum order filter on changing its word length gives
a better results or we can say that the filter acts as a anti
imaging filter.

IV. COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS

Fig. 1 FIR Interpolator response when word length =8
This shows that the response is not similar to the original
signal and this can be treated as quantized noise. The
expected response is much far away from the original
response.

A comparative study can be done on analyzing the above

word length effect:
Table 1. For minimum order FIR Equiripple filter
Word length

Now again analyzing on word length of 16 we get the

following result

Fig. 2 FIR Interpolator response when word length=16

This shows that on increasing the word length the
response is getting closer to the original signal.

Stop band Attenuation

-35dB (approx.)

16

-75dB

32

-80 dB Stop band

attenuation is
equiripple

A comparative analysis is shown through the graph

which shows that when the word length was minimum
then the response was poor. The stop band response was
poor. Only an attenuation of -35dB was given by the
stop band of a FIR filter. Now when the word length is
increased to 16 then the response is coming closer to the
reference signal response of a FIR equiripple filter. Now
the attenuation provided by the stop band is high which
is -75dB. Now when the word length is increased up to
32 then the response is almost equiripple and now the

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International Journal of Advanced Engineering Research and Technology (IJAERT), ISSN: 23488190
th
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ICRTIET-2014 Conference Proceeding, 30 -31 August 2014

stop band completely attenuates the noise and hence the

performance of the filter smoothens up.

[2] S Salivahanan, A Vallavaraj, C Gnanapriya,

Digital Signal Processing, Tata McGraw Hill,
pp. 1-4, 380-384
[3] Sandeep Kaur, Mandeep Singh Saini, Palvee
Optimal Interpolated FIR Digital Filter Design
with Spectral Estimation for Radar and Sonar
System, International Journal of Engineering
Research and Applications, Vol. 3, Issue 2, pp.
866-871, March-April 2013.

Fig. 4 Comparative analysis at different word lengths

A comparative study of this graph shows that the
response shown in red colour is closer to the equiripple
response of FIR Equiripple filter and hence is far better.
This is the response for word length 32. The response
shown through blue colour is not the desired response
and corresponds to the word length 8.The response
shown in green colour corresponds to word length 16
and is much better than the response shown in blue
colour. Thus with the increase in word length the
response is getting more closer to the desired signal.

V. CONCLUSION
From the above analysis it is clear that on increasing the
word length of an FIR equiripple interpolator the
response is almost similar to the response of FIR
equiripple filter. There is reduction in noise at the output
of the interpolator. So it can be concluded that the input,
output and coefficient length must be adequate to
minimize the effects of coefficient quantization on the
frequency response and to prevent the possibility of
instability.

[4] S. A.Wadekar and A. C. Parker, Accuracy

sensitive word-length selection for algorithm
optimization, in Proc. Int. Conf. Computer
Design, Austin, TX, , pp. 5461, Oct. 1998.
[5] A. Nayak, M. Haldar, A. Choudhary, and P.
Banerjee, Precision and error analysis of
MATLAB applications during automated
hardware synthesis for FPGAs, in Proc.
Design Automation Test Eur., Munich,
Germany, pp. 722728, 2001
[6] M. Stephenson, J. Babb, and S. Amarasinghe,
Bitwidth analysis with application to silicon
compilation, in Proc. SIGPLAN Program.
Lang. Design Implementation, Vancouver, BC,
Canada, pp. 108120, June 2000.
[7] K.-I. KumandW. Sung, Combined word-length
optimization and highlevel synthesis of digital
signal processing systems, IEEE Trans.
Computer- Aided Design, vol. 20, pp. 921930,
Aug. 2001
[8] M.-A. Cantin, Y. Savaria, and P. Lavoie, An
automatic word length determination method,
in Proc. IEEE Int. Symp. Circuits Syst., pp. V53V-56, 2001

Acknowledgement
The authors would also like to thank Director,
National Institute of Technical Teachers Training &
Research, Chandigarh, India for their constant
inspirations and support throughout this research work.
References
[1] Emmanuel C. Ifeacher, Barrie W. Jervis, Digital
Signal Processing, Pearson Education Asia,
Second Edition, pp. 1-4, 590-591.

[9] R. Cmar, L. Rijnders, P. Schaumont, S.

Vernalde, and I. Bolsens, A methodology and
design environment for DSP ASIC fixed point
refinement, in Proc. Design Automation Test
Eur., Munich, Germany, pp. 271276, 1999.
Authors
Ankita Mahajan received Bachelors
of Technology degree in Electronics
and Communication Engineering
from Green Hills Engineering

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International Journal of Advanced Engineering Research and Technology (IJAERT), ISSN: 23488190
th
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ICRTIET-2014 Conference Proceeding, 30 -31 August 2014

College, HPU, Shimla, India in

2009. She is pursuing Masters of
engineering degree
in Electronics and Communication Engineering from
National Institute of Technical Teachers Training and
Research, Panjab University, Chandigarh, India. Her
current research interests are in Very Large Scale
Integration Design and Embedded System Design.

Rajesh Mehra received the

Bachelors of Technology
degree in Electronics and
Communication Engineering
from National Institute of
Technology, Jalandhar, India
in 1994, and the Masters of
Engineering
degree
in
Electronics
and
Communication Engineering
from National Institute of
TechnicalTeachers Training
& Research, Panjab
Univsrsity, Chandigarh, India in 2008. He is pursuing
Doctor of Philosophy degree in Electronics and
Communication Engineering from National Institute of
Technical Teachers Training & Research, Panjab
Univsrsity, Chandigarh, India. He is an Associate
Professor with the Department of Electronics &
Communication Engineering, National Institute of
Technical Teachers Training & Research, Ministry of
Human Resource Development, Chandigarh, India. His
current research and teaching interests are in Signal, and
Communications Processing, Very Large Scale
Integration Design. He has authored more than 175
research publications including more than 100 in
Journals. Mr. Mehra is member of IEEE and ISTE.

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