Matlab DSP Conference (DSP’99), Tampere, Finland, 16-17 November 1999

Simulink/Matlab-to-VHDL Route for Full-Custom/FPGA Rapid

Prototyping of DSP Algorithms

Artur KRUKOWSKI and Izzet KALE

University of Westminster, United Kingdom.

the work described in this paper.

Abstract Primarily, the work has been concentrated on the
This paper presents the way of speeding up the route analysis of the SimulinkTM structure and its similarity with
from the theoretical design with Simulink/Matlab, via the VHDL description. The structural style of programming
behavioral simulation in fixed-point arithmetic to the has been chosen for the first version of our conversion tool,
implementation on either FPGA or custom silicon. This has as this would allow direct mapping of SimulinkTM structures
been achieved by porting the netlist of the Simulink system into ones described in VHDL. As SimulinkTM is a high-level
description into the VHDL. At the first instance, the description tool and allows such operations as unconstrained
Simulink-to-VHDL converter has been designed to use arithmetic operations, the behavioural style will be included
structural VHDL code to describe system interconnections, in the next version of the conversion tool. The ultimate tool
allowing simple behavioral descriptions for basic blocks. to be developed will also allow incorporation of some form
The resulting VHDL code delivers bit-true result when of simple optimisation into the mapping process.
compared to the equivalent fixed-point Simulink model
simulations.
2. Basics of VHDL
VHDL stands for Very High Speed Integrated Circuits
1. Introduction (VHSIC) Hardware Description Language (HDL). It is a
However, the success of VHDL for designing integrated language for describing digital electronic systems. It was
circuits is indisputable. Unfortunately there is a lack of born out of the United States Government’s VHSIC
tools available linking VHDL tools with such high-level program in 1980 and was adopted as a standard for
digital filter design/simulation tools like MatlabTM and describing the structure and function of Integrated Circuits
SimulinkTM, which operate on the levels higher than the (IC). Soon after it was developed and adopted as a standard
structure. At the moment the designer who designed and by the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers
tested his design theoretically using high-level tools is (IEEE) in the US (IEEE-1076-1987) and in other countries
required to spend the same or more time on designing the [1,2]. VHDL continues to evolve. Although new standards
structure and the architecture for his theoretical design, have been prepared (VHDL-93) most commercial VHDL
simulate it, test it and fabricate it. This involves a dangerous tools use 1076-1987 version of VHDL, thus making it the
break in the integrity of design flow, giving chances for most compatible when using different compilation tools.
inconsistencies to creep in. An automated high-integrity The 1076-1987 standard has also been used here.
link between theoretical design and implementation is VHDL enables the designer to:
essential and can be achieved with VHDL via a conversion
• Describe the design in its structure, to specify how it is
tool. A very attractive high-level design/simulation tool is
decomposed into sub-designs, and how these sub-
provided by MathWorks TM and is called SimulinkTM. It is a
designs are interconnected.
very flexible design tool, which allows testing of a high-
• Specify the function of designs using a familiar, C-like
level structural description of the design and makes possible
programming language form.
quick changes and corrections. The circuit description
structure is very similar to the way the design could be • Simulate the design before sending it off for fabrication,
so that the designer has a chance to rapidly compare
implemented later. Therefore mapping tool allowing
alternative approach and test for correctness without the
conversion of such a structure into VHDL code would save
the designer’s time, which otherwise has to be spent in delay and expense of multiple prototyping.
rewriting the same structure in VHDL and probably making VHDL is a C-like, general purpose programming
mistakes that will need debugging. This idea is the basis of language with extensions to model both concurrent and

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 Matlab DSP Conference (DSP’99), Tampere, Finland, 16-17 November 1999

sequential flows of execution, and allowing delayed to design both behavioural and structural designs (where this
assignment of values. To a first approximation VHDL can latter one is the closest to the physical implementation)
be considered to be a combination of two languages: one justifies its choice. The description of a typical SimulinkTM
describing the structure of the integrated circuit and its block is similar to the netlist of the physical implementation.
interconnections (structural description) and the other one The VHDL description has been chosen for the output of the
describing its behaviour using algorithmic constructs conversion tool, as it is the highest level technology-
(behavioural description). independent description of the design to be realised. There
VHDL allows three styles of programming: are also many tools available both Unix and PC based for
compiling VHDL into a netlist, then ported into the custom
1. Structural
silicon fabrication arena or FPGAs. Such tools include Peak
2. Register Transfer Level
VHDL/FPGA from Accolade Design Automation Inc. [3],
3. Behavioural
Galileo and Renoir from Mentor [4].
The first one, structural, is the most commonly used as it The tasks of the converter can be described as follows:
allows description of the structure of the IC very precisely
1. Analyse the SimulinkTM model and identify:
by the user. This in very many cases gives the best
• Common and different blocks
performance over compiler optimised structures, especially
for high speed, fixed-point applications like polyphase IIR • Connections (signals) and ports for multilevel models
structures [5-8]. Its behavioural style permits the designer • Block parameters
to quickly test concepts, where the designer can specify the 2. Generate a VHDL equivalent:
high-level function of the design without taking much care • Find entities available in standard component library
how it will be done structurally. This can be very attractive • Create architectures for each block from bottom up
for quick design of low and medium-speed and low-volume • Create configuration files for every entity linking in
applications, where the designer expertise is not available. standard libraries
A word of warning is appropriate here. Designs synthesised
from behavioural descriptions will often end up using a lot It can be easily noticed is that there is a set of blocks in
more resources than actually necessary, even after SimulinkTM, which have to be treated as the basic ones.
optimisation. There are compiled “s-functions”, the contents of that are
not available. Therefore, their behaviour has to be carefully
analysed in order to create their equivalent VHDL
2.1. Effective Implementation via Simulink- descriptions, to be later included into the library of standard
to-VHDL Conversion Tool. SimulinkTM entities/architectures.
So far the biggest problem which the designer faces very
often is how to pass from the algorithmic design to its 2.2. Basics of Simulink.
physical implementation. The first tool the designer uses
when developing the new idea is a high-level design and SimulinkTM, as is true for most of high-level simulation
simulation tool. One of the most commonly used high-level software, does not allow testing certain behaviour patterns
tools is MatlabTM with SimulinkTM. It allows the designer to that a real target design can exhibit, most of which are
put together a behavioural or structural simulation very available for the VHDL simulator. The most reliable
easily and quickly checking the algorithm or making the simulation can only be performed after porting the compiled
necessary adjustments to it. Working directly with any low- VHDL into the implementation software. Simulinkdoes not:
level implementation tool from the start is simply not • Do fixed point arithmetic in the general sense (expected
practical, as every small change in the algorithm may in a future version).
sometimes require substantial redesign of the • Have data types compatible with bit logic (bits can only
implementation. Therefore an automatic link between the be simulated with floating-point).
high-level algorithmic design, like SimulinkTM model, to • Incorporate propagation delay in its blocks, which is not
some implementation description, like a target netlist or relevant at this level of abstract, but necessary for the
VHDL, would lead to great effort and time savings in the implementation.
design cycle. • Support reusable symbols (they may have different
MatlabTM has been used at the University of contents and the same name).
Westminster, Applied DSP Research Group, for a long time
In the structural simulation using bit logic arithmetic it is
and has proven to be an invaluable tool for DSP
possible to force SimulinkTM to assign only 0s and 1s, even
applications. Therefore this software was chosen for the
though they are represented with floating-point
high-level design part of the whole system. In the first
variables/signals. Fixed-point arithmetic can be
instance SimulinkTM has been chosen to be the input to the
implemented structurally in SimulinkTM using gates. This
conversion tool. The fact that SimulinkTM makes it possible

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 Matlab DSP Conference (DSP’99), Tampere, Finland, 16-17 November 1999

also simplifies setting propagation delay, as this could be wherever it was possible. Even so there were cases
included into the VHDL description of each gate. However, when the data type had to be derived indirectly from the
this is not possible in the SimulinkTM model. Summarising, block to which the port was connected.
the structural fixed-point design can be quite easily • The number of input and output ports was not defined
converted into VHDL directly, without much additional consistently. For some SimulinkTM blocks they were
intelligence required from the conversion program. clearly given by the parameters “Inputs” and “Outputs”.
The model description of the SimulinkTM block For other ones there was only one parameter “Ports”,
(MDL-file) is very similar to the representation of the containing a five element vector with the number of
common structure. It contains both the parameters of the input ports in the first element and output ports in the
simulation, description of each block with parameters for second element. There were also several blocks for
each block and block connections. The problem is that which there was no description of the number of ports at
SimulinkTM does not use reusable symbols. This means that all. For such a case whether the block had input or
if there are several blocks or symbols of the same name, output port had to be derived from the connection
they are all fully duplicated to the most basic element. description (“Line”).
These makes the analysis of common blocks much more
The main keyword in the MDL-file to look for is
difficult as these blocks may have slight differences and
then qualify as two different ones, even if they have the “System”. This indicates the beginning of the description of
the blocks and their connections within one block. It is then
same name. Therefore, the designer must obey the rule that
followed by a number of “Block” sections describing
all blocks having the same symbol must also have the same
contents. They may only have different parameters. components of the design and “Line” sections each
equivalent to a single wire connector (one can connect to
multiple outputs). The “Block” can have another “System”
2.3. Structural Analysis of the Simulink section, which means it contains a lower-level circuit
Model Description. description. Sometimes such blocks also have some mask
parameters. This indicates that there has been a symbol
As it was pointed out earlier, the description of the created for such a block. In this case “Mask type” describes
SimulinkTM model has close resemblance to the MatlabTM the common symbol name (which could be used for the
structure definition. Describing the model with the structure entity name later), “MaskPromptString” contains
would allow simplifying the conversion process as inter- descriptions of the symbol parameters, “MaskInitialization”
dependence of blocks could be indicated by their position in has their names and “MaskValueString” their values. If no
the tree of blocks. Therefore the conversion of the “System” is found it means that the block is the basic
MDL-file into the MatlabTM structure was the first task to be component of the SimulinkTM library and its description
done by the conversion utility developed. should be later copied from the library of basic VHDL
The main problems faced in this stage were: blocks.
The “Line” statement contains the names of one source
• The structure obviously can not allow the same field block and one or more output ones and their port numbers.
names at the same level, which was allowed in the For multiple output ports each of them is described by its
MDL-file. All the blocks and lines (connection signals) own “Branch” statement.
had to be renamed consecutively as a remedy to this There are also other block parameters like “Decimation”
problem. Alternatively they can be combined into a and “SamplingTime”, which are useful for multirate
vector. systems. These have not been used in the current version of
• There are no commas to separate parameters and values the MDL-to-VHDL conversion program.
in the MDL-file, required by the structure syntax. They
had to be included appropriately. 2.4. Automated Conversion from Simulink to
• There is an inconsistency in the description of text VHDL.
constants. In MatlabTM they are indicated by a single
quote, in the MDL-file by the double quote. Therefore In order to simplify the first version of the conversion
single quotes were replaced by double quotes wherever program, it has been designed with some constraint put on
the text constant was found. the original SimulinkTM model. The model was required to:
• SimulinkTM does not require ports to have their width • Operate on bit signals or vectors of bits
always defined. This created confusion in specifying the • Have only one sampling rate throughout the design
number of input/output signals in the entity definition. • Be composed of gates, constants, ports and buses only
The safest solution was to make a rule of explicitly This allowed the generation of the structural VHDL
defining the width of the ports in the SimulinkTM model description relatively easily. The next versions of this

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 Matlab DSP Conference (DSP’99), Tampere, Finland, 16-17 November 1999

toolbox will allow different variable types and generate elliptic approximation, have been reported in depth [5,6].
structural or behavioural VHDL wherever applicable. The algorithm for generating the prototype allpass filter
The conversion requires two passes. First it looks coefficients for floating-point precision coefficients [1] is
through the whole design identifying common blocks of the based on the analogy to elliptic filters. However, for
model, each of which would be described in a separate effective real-time physical realizations (fixed-point) finite
VHDL file. It distinguishes the sub-blocks of the model wordlength coefficients are required and need to be
from the basic SimulinkTM blocks. It also gathers established, [7].
information about ports of each block and their types. This The basic building block from Figure 1(a) is the 2nd-order
information is needed for creating “component” statements IIR allpass having its two poles on the imaginary axis and its
in the VHDL file. two zeros on the same axis, but at the reciprocal distance
At the second pass the algorithm looks recursively from the origin. It has the transfer function of (1).
through the whole hierarchy of the model from the top level
down to the bottom one creating the structural description of H( z) = ( cz 2 + 1) ( z 2 + c) (1)
each block found in the first pass. For each of them it finds
the list of “blocks” and the list of “lines”. The first ones are There exists a variety of physical structures, which
used to generate block instantiation and configuration implement (1). The structure choice we have made here is
commands and the latter ones to define the internal signals. that of the Numerator first, followed by the Denominator
The entity definition is being created from the information (N-D form), computations. By doing the calculations in this
found in the first pass of the conversion. manner, relatively low peak gains at intermediate points in
the structure are achieved, at a cost of the minimum number
of computations. The physical structure of the basic
2.5. The Basics of the Polyphase IIR Numerator-Denominator form (N-D) 2nd -order allpass filter
Half-Band Lowpass Filter Structure is shown in Figure 1(a).
Configuring the appropriate order all-pass sections in a
The idea of converting the SimulinkTM design into parallel fashion, with a delay in one of the branches, as
VHDL has been tested on the example of the two-path two- shown in Figure 1(b), results in an overall lowpass half-band
coefficient polyphase filter [5,6]. filter as shown in Figure 2.
The basic recursive (IIR) allpass filter, shown in φ(ν) (a)
Figure 1(a) is the core of the polyphase IIR structure. For 0 0.25 0.5 ν
0
the case of the half-band lowpass filter two of such allpass -π
π/2
blocks have to be used in a two-path configuration shown in
-2 π
Figure 1(b), with the appropriate delay in one of the π
branches. The higher order filters can be obtained by -3π
Passband Stopband
cascading a number of basic allpass filters in each path of (in-phase) (out-of-phase)
|Η(ν)| dB
the polyphase structure, taking care only to keep the number 0 (b)
of them similar in both paths. By carefully designing the -3dB
coefficients, the structure allows to obtain a very high- -40

performance and relatively easily implementable half-band -80

0.5 ν
0 0.25
lowpass filter. Figure 2. The influence of the phase responses of the
allpass filters, (a), in both branches of the
In (a) (b) polyphase structure on the magnitude response of
-2
z
Allpass the overall lowpass filter, (b).
Σ Σ In c1, c3, …
The effect on the pole zero pattern (PZP) is that its poles
Σ
c Allpass -1
are at the same locations as for the allpass filters with an
-2
z Out
z c2, c4, … addition of an extra pole at z = 0 (due to the delay added to
Out 0.5 the lower branch). The zeros on the other hand are
transported to new locations, with an additional zero
Figure 1. The N-D Form Allpass Filter Structure, (a), and introduced at the Nyquist frequency (Figure 3). For the case
the Two-Path Half-Band Polyphase IIR Lowpass when second-order allpass sections are used, the magnitude
Filter Structure, (b). response of each stage in Figure 2 is given by (2).

{ ( )( )}
Design techniques for such polyphase half-band recursive
H ( z ) = G ( z ) a1 ( z + 1) z z + a1 z + a0
2 2
IIR filters employing parallel/cascade combinations of c
elementary all-pass sections having one coefficient per
( ) ( ) ( )
(2)
G ( z) = z +
a0 a0 a0
− 1 z + a 0 + a11 − +1 z + −1 z + 1
4 3 2
second-order stage, as the starting point for an eventual a1 a1 a1

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 Matlab DSP Conference (DSP’99), Tampere, Finland, 16-17 November 1999

Im(z) (a) Im(z) (b) Im(z) (c) to avoid the unnecessary loss of precision before the
subsequent addition. All data was being represented in
two’s complement arithmetic with 2 integer bits and a sign,
Re(z) Re(z) Re(z) which gives enough guard bits to deal with internal
calculation, 20 altogether.
function [out]=rtz20(in)
fraction = 2^20; x=fraction.*in;
Top branch Bottom branch Overall filter out=fix(x)./fraction;

Figure 3. The PZP of allpass filters in both branches of the Function 1 The 20-bit Round-to-Zero Function.
two-path polyphase structure, (a) and (b), and the function [out]=t20(in)
PZP of the overall lowpass filter, (c). fraction = 2^20; x=fraction.*in;
out=floor(x)./fraction;
The gain at dc (z=1) for this class of filter, is unity, with
zero gain at Nyquist (z = -1), and is down by -3dB at half- Function 2 The 20-bit Truncation Function.
Nyquist (z = j), irrespective of the filter coefficients, function [out]=t24(in)
a 0, a 1, ... or the order of the allpass sections. The best way fraction = 2^24; x = fraction.*in;
out = floor(x)./fraction;
to explain the working of the filter is via phase responses of
the allpass filters (since the magnitude is unity throughout). Function 3. The 24-bit Truncation Function.
There exists a phase shift of exactly π (due to the unit delay Such a rounding scheme allowed eliminating of the limit
in the bottom path) at Nyquist between the two branches, cycles while keeping the DC offset low. The floating-point
and that both branches are in phase at DC. version of the filter has been compared to the architectural
There is, however, a sharp transition in the phase at half- one designed from standard gates (Figure 4). The
Nyquist as the poles on the imaginary axis are approached simulation uses a two-phase non-overlapping clock required
and passed while traversing the unit circle from DC to by the delayors built from two D-type flip-flops per bit per
Nyquist. Hence the rationale here is that the (top and unit delay. Flip-flops are active with the rising edge of the
bottom branch) filter responses add constructively (as they clock. The data is being read at the rising edge of Clock1
are in phase) from dc to half-Nyquist forming the new and being available at the output at the rising edge of
filter's pass-band and add destructively (as they are π out of Clock2. The comparative simulation allows testing of the
phase) from half-Nyquist to Nyquist, forming the new design for both an impulse and for the signal generated by
filter's stopband response. A simple yet very effective way the Σ∆ modulator. Results of both the fixed-point
of getting high levels of stopband attenuation, without behavioural and the fixed-point structural versions of the
substantially affecting the passband performance is through design were exactly the same.
cascading of lower-order structures.
Since the transfer function of the half-band allpass filters
involve only polynomials in z2 , the polyphase structure
incorporating them is very attractive for two-times
decimation (interpolation) arrangements as the sample rate
reduction (increase) can be moved to the input (output) of
the polyphase filter. The unit delay in the lower branch is
effected by feeding even samples into the top branch and
odd samples into the lower branch (effectively performing
undersampling) [7]-[8].
Figure 4 The test bench comparing fixed-point designs: the
behavioural one and the structural one.
2.6. The Simulink Simulation Set-up
The fixed-point structural system has been designed to
The example design is implementing a two-coefficient run from the external clock signal in order to be able to
(c1=0.125 and c2=0.5625) polyphase lowpass filter as synchronise the filter with the input data for the ultimate
shown in Figure 1. The design was first captured using physical implementation. The only blocks requiring the
standard floating-point SimulinkTM blocks. In order to make clock are the delayors, the rest is just combinational blocks
it close to the implementation the results of additions were for which the result is available at a certain time after the
rounded-to-zero to 20-bits (Function 1), subtractions change of the input. This time is called the propagation
truncated to 20-bits (Function 2) and multiplication time. The maximum propagation time is dependent on the
truncated to 24-bits (Function 3). Local increase of propagation time of the gates and the maximum number of
wordlength at the multiplication was decided upon in order dependent gates the signal has to go through.

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 Matlab DSP Conference (DSP’99), Tampere, Finland, 16-17 November 1999

Figure 5 shows the inside of the fixed-point polyphase The structure of the 20-bit subtractor with truncation is
lowpass filter and Figure 6 describes the allpass structure shown in Figure 7. The second input is being negated
used for both the UpperBranch and the LowerBranch blocks (taking the negated output from the delay block) and
(the only difference being the multiplication factor). The increased by one in order to inverse the sign before being
floating-point design looks very similar to the fixed-point added to the first input. As the two’s complement arithmetic
one, it just does not have the clock signals since SimulinkTM is used, negation is achieved by inverting all the bits at the
itself is controlling the simulation. delayor (Q! output) and adding one using a ladder of two-bit
adders with carry input (Figure 8). Assuming the same
propagation delay for all gates, TP , the maximum time
required to add two numbers is 20TP .

Figure 5 The fixed-point half-band filter structure.

Figure 8. The two-bit adder structure with carry input.

The 20-bit wide delayors in Figure 9 have been designed
using two D-type flip-flops in the Master-Slave arrangement
for each bit. The Mux and Demux are just converting the
single bit lines into the vector of bits and back again. They
were used for the purpose of the simulation only and were
not to be implemented.
Figure 6. The fixed-point 2nd -order allpass filter structure.

Figure 7. The fixed-point 20-bit subtractor structure. Figure 9. The fixed-point 20-bit delayor structure.

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 Matlab DSP Conference (DSP’99), Tampere, Finland, 16-17 November 1999

Notice the termination blocks (new feature in The multiplication by 0.5625 is a bit more complicated
SimulinkTM 3) used to avoid warnings about unconnected (Figure 11), as this requires adding together two shifted
outputs. The multiplication by 0.125, required in the versions of the input, by one bit (0.5 factor) and by four bits
UpperBranch, effectively means shifting data three bits (0.0625 factor). For such a case 24-bits are required to
towards the Least Significant Bit (LSB) as in Figure 10. In provide the output at the full accuracy. The result is
order to take care of the negative numbers in two’s available after a maximum time of 20TP .
complement arithmetic , the Most Significant Bit (MSB) has The simplest case of the multiplier is the half divider
been propagated to the next three bits (sign extension). The (Figure 12) required at the output of the filter to scale the
output is given in 24-bits without any loss of precision. transfer function to unity for low frequencies. This has been
Actually, 23-bits is enough to provide the full accuracy. achieved by one bit right shifting of the input signal. The
However, 24-bits sizing have been chosen for the result has been truncated to 20-bits by disregarding the LSB
consistency with the other multiplier by the factor of 0.5625. of the input data.

Figure 12 The fixed-point one-bit right shifter structure.

The result of the multiplication by 0.125 or 0.5625 is

Figure 10. The fixed-point 14-bit 0.125 gain structure. being added to the delayed samples of the input in the adder,
the structure of which is shown in Figure 13.

Figure 13. Fixed-point adder structure (20-bit + 24-bit)

Figure 11. The fixed-point 0.5625 gain structure. with the 20-bit result rounded to zero.

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 Matlab DSP Conference (DSP’99), Tampere, Finland, 16-17 November 1999

The result of adding a 20-bit input to the 24-bit one is point simulation. The same magnitude response zoomed
subsequently constrained back to 20-bits using a round-to- into the passband showing the ripple structure is presented
zero scheme. This is achieved by the OR and AND gates. in Figure 17. For the comparison, the floating-point
The four-port OR gate examines if there is any 1’s set simulation result is shown in dashed line. As it can be
among the disregarded bits. If the MSB=0 (positive expected, the latter one shows much smaller ripples.
number), the output of the OR gate is disregarded forcing to
|H(ν)|[mdB]
truncate the data. If the MSB=1 (negative number), the
0
result of the OR gate is added to the output rounding it up
towards zero. The maximum propagation time of the block
-20
is 35TP . The adder from Figure 13 required a two-bit adder
with no carry input, which is shown in Figure 14.
-40

-60

-80

-100
Figure 14. The two-bit adder structure without carry input. 0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 ν
Figure 16. Magnitude response of the implemented
The 20-bit addition with truncation of the result has been
polyphase halfband lowpass filter showing
implemented as in Figure 15. No loss of precision happens
the stopband attenuation.
here as the format of the data is such that the possibility of a
carry bit set does not influence the performance of the
structure. The maximum propagation time is 34TP . |H( ν)| [mdB ]
0.2

0.1

-0.1

-0.2

-0.3

-0.4
0 0.05 0.1 0.15 ν

Figure 17. The passband ripples of the implemented

polyphase halfband lowpass filter (solid line)
and the theoretical one (dashed line).
The polyphase IIR structure with its high performance
and low sensitivity to coefficient quantisation and use of a
small number of coefficients, has been found very attractive
for decimation filters (the core of which is the lowpass
filter) for Sigma-Delta (Σ∆) based Analog-to-Digital
Converters (ADC). It is required for the decimation filter to
work very fast as the rate of the data coming from the Σ∆
modulator is many times higher than the one required by the
sampling theorem to which it is sampled down after the
Figure 15. The fixed-point 14-bit adder structure. lowpass filtering. It is shown in Figure 18 the example
spectrum of the output of the Σ∆ modulator excited with
The result of the SimulinkTM simulation showing the single sine input and the output of the polyphase filter. The
magnitude response of the implemented filter with its quantisation noise at high frequencies is very clearly
stopband attenuation is given in Figure 16. The shape is very decreased while the signal at low frequencies is practically
close to the one, which can be obtained from the floating- not affected at all.

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 Matlab DSP Conference (DSP’99), Tampere, Finland, 16-17 November 1999

|H(ν)| [mdB] Output of the Σ∆ modulator setting a CLR_L to zero for the first 60µs of the
50
simulation, before the first rising edge of Clk1 , i.e. first
reading of the data from the input.
• The propagation time through the blocks of the design
plays an important role in the design. This parameter is
0 not considered in SimulinkTM at all. The VHDL
simulation allowed assessment of the maximum speed
of operation of the design that was approximately four
After polyphase filtering
times the maximum settling time of the combinational
-50 logic. For the simulation provided here the clocking
speed has been set to 3.3MHz, assuming 2ns
propagation time for the logic gates.
• The simulation in SimulinkTM required only that Clk1
-100 and Clk2 were non-overlapping clock signals. The
0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 ν VHDL simulation proved that the best performance
Figure 18. The example spectrum of the output of the (highest speed of operation) has been achieved when
overlapping time was a quarter of the clock period.
Σ∆ modulator excited with single sine input
and the output of the polyphase filter. • The test bench may be converted from SimulinkTM, but
it is better to create a new one, which would compare
The size of the datapaths has a direct influence on both the results from SimulinkTM with the results of the
the filter stopband attenuation and its passband ripples. At VHDL simulation, exactly the way it was done for the
least 14-bit datapath was required for the attenuation to fall two-coefficient (α1 =0.125, α2 =0.5625) example design.
down below 60dB. A minimum of 20-bit datapaths was
required in order to achieve less than 0.5mdB peak-to-peak
passband ripples.

2.7. Conversion of the Model to VHDL

The conversion of the MDL model into VHDL has been
done with the preliminary version of the custom MatlabTM
program. Because of the difficulties in the analysis of the
SimulinkTM description the resulting VHDL code required
some additional editing. The basic blocks like D-type flip-
flops with reset, standard logic gates and the two-phase
clock have been designed manually in behavioural
description as part of the library of standard blocks.
A separate test bench has been written. Its purpose was
to compare the results of the VHDL simulation with the
output from the fixed-point SimulinkTM model. The Figure 19. Screen shot of the simulation in PeakFPGA.
complete output of SimulinkTM run has been stored in the
file comprising all bits of the input and the output. This file Technology Area Delay DFlops PI PO Instances
has been read sample-by-sample and compared with the [FG] [ns] (DEFs)
output of the VHDL simulation at each clock cycle. The X-3000 264 248 240 23 20 550
compilation and simulation of the VHDL code, and X-3100 264 122 240 23 20 550
X-4000 252 350 240 23 20 560
subsequently its synthesis, has been done with PeakFPGA
X-5200 267 325 240 23 20 557
from Accolade Design Automation Inc. [3] provided by the X-7200 1224 N/A - 23 20 1755
company for the purpose of evaluation. The example screen X-9500XL 1454 N/A 240 23 20 1681
shot of the simulator software running the designed VHDL
code is shown in Figure 19. Table 1 Results of the Synthesis with Galileo for Xilinx.
The VHDL simulation has some differences from the
high-level SimulinkTM one: The VHDL code designed for the example single-stage
polyphase filter has been subject to synthesis in both
• There is a need to take proper care of avoiding PeakFPGA version 4.25 and in Galileo for Xilinx from
unassigned states by properly resetting the design Mentor [4]. The first one returned the same result for all
before it starts operating. This has been achieved by design families, including Actel, Altera, Lattice, Lucent and

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 Matlab DSP Conference (DSP’99), Tampere, Finland, 16-17 November 1999

QuickLogic EDIF devices. It turned out that only 360 first four stages of the decimation filter described in [5].
D-type flip-flops and 1132 two-input gates (677 LUTs) were Even when considering that the design has to be repeated
required to implement the design (excluding the clock) eight times, the total required silicon area of 0.5mm by
generator. 0.5mm is very tiny. Putting together the hardwired filters
The results of the synthesis by Galileo for Xilinx only would avoid the need for fast processors, giving more space
were different for each design component. These results are for the analogue part of the A/D converter, hopefully the
presented in Table 1, showing the area, total propagation whole Σ∆ modulator. The small size implications are a big
delay, number of D-type flip-flops, input pins, PI, output advantage as this would free up silicon real estate for the
pins, PO, and instances. Basically Galileo calculated that implementation of other functions.
only 240 flip-flops were needed for the delayors. The
difference was in the number of gates required, between 267
and 1454 depending on the technology. Galileo, in contrast Acknowledgements
to PeakFPGA, also gave the estimated input-to-output delay
between 122ns and 350ns, dependent on the technology Authors would like to thank Accolade Design
used. The maximum clock frequency of the filter may Automation, Inc. for allowing to use of the evaluation
therefore range from 1.1MHz for Xilinx-5200, 1.4MHz for version of the Peak VHDL package, used here to verify the
Xilinx-3000 up to 2.9MHz for Xilinx-3100. It is dependent results of the Simulink-to-VHDL conversion.
on the propagation delay of combinational logic, which is
maximum 4.5ns for Xilinx-5200, 3ns for Xilinx-3000 and
References
1.5ns for Xilinx-3100. The propagation delay for Xilinx-
9500XL is 4-6ns. The sequential delay of the flip-flop is [1] Ashenden, P. J., VHDL Cook-Book , First Edition,
merely up to 6ns and all of them work in parallel. Therefore Department of Computer Science, University of Adelaide,
the preferable technology to implement the filter could be South Australia, July 1990.
Xilinx-3100A, giving the best speed of operation at low cost [2] Holmes, C., VHDL Language Course, Rutherford Appleton
and optimum use of the FPGA. Assuming 0.1µm Laboratory, Microelectronics Support Centre, Chilton,
technology with a transistor size of 0.25µm, the gate Didcot, 23-25 May 1995.
consisting of four transistors and each flip-flop consisting of [3] Accolade Design Automation, Inc. WEB site:
http://www.acc-eda.com
eight the estimated total size of the components of the
[4] Mentor Graphics WEB site:
design would be approximately 0.2mm by 0.2mm plus few http://www.mentor.com/products/alphaindex.html
percent for the connections. [5] harris, f., "On the design and performance of efficient and
novel filter structures using recursive allpass filters",
Proceedings 3rd ISSPA 92, vol. 1, pp. 1-5, Gold Coast,
3. Conclusions Queensland, 16-21 August 1992.
[6] harris, f., M. d'Oreye de Lantremange and A. G.
The example design of the polyphase filter and then its
Constantinides, "Digital signal processing with efficient
conversion into VHDL proved that such an idea would be a
polyphase recursive all-pass filters", International
very attractive way of designing test chips very quickly. It Conference on Signal Processing, Florence, 4-6 September
took three days to get from the SimulinkTM model to its final 1991.
synthesised version. The next stage of the research work [7] Kale, I., R. C. S. Morling and A. Krukowski, "A high-fidelity
would be either to compile to a custom layout and put it decimator chip for the measurement of Sigma-Delta
onto silicon or to commit the design onto a standard FPGA. modulator performance", IEEE Transactions on
The current version of the program performs only direct Instrumentation and Measurement, vol. 44, no. 5, October
mapping of structures from SimulinkTM to VHDL and does 1995.
[8] Krukowski, A., I. Kale, K. Hejn and G. D. Cain, "A bit-
not work for multiplexed architectures. In order to do such
flipping approach to multistage two-path decimation filter
conversion the program requires an algorithm analysing
design", Second International Symposium on DSP for
behavioural or structural descriptions to find common Communication Systems, SPRI, 26-29 April 1994.
operators, and convert them into the multiplexed structure
with added control circuitry. This will be the aim of the
future work.
Address for correspondence.
The DSP group in the Department of Electronic Systems
has been active in the area of polyphase filters and their Dr. Artur Krukowski
application for decimation and interpolation structures for University of Westminster,
ADDA for a number of years. The polyphase structure Department of Electronic Systems,
proved itself to be the best to be implemented in the very London W1M 8JS, United Kingdom.
fast and high accuracy decimators. The specimen filter, E-mail: [email protected]
presented in this paper, could be comfortably used for the WWW: http://www.cmsa.wmin.ac.uk/~artur

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