European Journal of Scientific Research ISSN 1450-216X Vol.49 No.4 (2011), pp. 634-641 EuroJournals Publishing, Inc.

. 2011 http://www.eurojournals.com/ejsr.htm

Slice Reduction Algorithm for Low Power and Area Efficient FIR Filter Using VLSI Design
A. Hemalatha HOD, Dept of ECE, Periyar Centinary Polytechnic College, Vallam A. Shanmugam Principal, Bannari Amman Institute of Technology, Sathyamangalam Abstract SDR is fast becoming a crucial element of wireless technology the use of SDR technology is predicted to replace many of the traditional methods of implementing transmitters and receivers while offering a wide range of advantages including adaptability, reconfigurability, and multifunctionality encompassing modes of operation, radio frequency bands, air interfaces, and waveforms. Research in this field is mainly directed towards improving the architecture and the computational efficiency of SDR systems. Software-defined radio (SDR) refers to wireless communication in which the transmitter modulation and the receiver demodulation are both generated through software. The main advantage of this approach is flexibility, as the software runs on one common hardware platform for any type of receiver configuration. The most computationally intensive part of the wideband receiver of a software defined radio (SDR) is the intermediate frequency (IF) processing block. Digital filtering is the main task in IF processing. The computational complexity of finite impulse response (FIR) filters used in the IF processing block is dominated by the number of adders (subtractions). The proposed reconfigurable synthesizes multiplier blocks offer significant savings in area over the traditional multiplier blocks for high-speed digital signal processor (DSP) systems are implemented on field programmable gate array (FPGA) hardware platforms. In addition, software radio has recently gained much attention due to the need for integrated and reconfigurable communication systems. To this end, reconfigurability has become an important issue for the future filter design. Previous research in this field has concentrated on minimizing multiplier block adder cost but the results presented here demonstrate that this optimization goal does not minimize FPGA hardware. Minimizing multiplier block logic depth and pipeline registers is shown to have the greatest influence in reducing FPGA area cost. Fully pipelined, full-parallel transposed-form FIR filters with reconfigurable multiplier block were generated using the new and previous algorithms, implemented on an FPGA target and the results compared. The proposed method offers average reductions of adders and full adders needed for the coefficient multipliers over conventional FIR filter implementation methods.

Introduction
High-speed digital signal processor (DSP) systems are increasingly being implemented on field programmable gate array (FPGA) hardware platforms. This trend is being fuelled by insurmountable

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application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) project costs and the flexibility and reconfigurability advantages of FPGAs over traditional DSPs and ASICs, respectively. More recently, Structured ASIC technology has yielded lower cost solutions to full custom ASIC by predefining several layers of silicon functionality that require the definition of only a few fabrication layers to implement the required design. However, the FPGA platform provides high performance and flexibility with the option to reconfigure and is the technology focused on for the remainder of this paper. There is a constant requirement for efficient use of FPGA resources where occupying less hardware for a given system can yield significant cost-related benefits: (i) reduced power consumption; (ii) area for additional application functionality; (iii) potential to use a smaller, cheaper FPGA. Finite impulse response (FIR) digital filters are common DSP functions and are widely used in FPGA implementations. If very high sampling rates are required, full-parallel hardware must be used where every clock edge feeds a new input sample and produces a new output sample. Such filters can be implemented on FPGAs using combinations of the general purpose logic fabric, on-board RAM and embedded arithmetic hardware. Full-parallel filters cannot share hardware over multiple clock cycles and so tend to occupy large amounts of resource. Hence, efficient implementation of such filters is important to minimize hardware requirement. When implementing a DSP system on a platform containing dedicated arithmetic blocks, it is normal practice to utilize such blocks as far as possible in preference to any general purpose logic fabric. However, in some cases, there may not be enough blocks for the target application or layout/routing constraints may prohibit their use. In such cases, the general purpose logic fabric must be utilized. In this paper, implementation of full-parallel filters using only the general purpose logic fabric is considered. Hence, the techniques presented here are also applicable to ASIC and Structured ASIC platforms. In Section 2, the filter type in use is described, followed by a discussion of multiplier block synthesis for low FPGA area in Section 3. A new multiplier block synthesis algorithm is presented in Section 4, followed by the generation and presentation of results (Sections 5). Conclusions are given in Section 6.

2. Transposed FIR Filter with Multiplier Block

Figure 1 shows three full-parallel, fixed-coefficient FIR filter structures that are mathematically identical but differ in architecture. Derived from the standard FIR structure using cut-set retiming, the transposed FIR (Fig. 1b) yields an identical mathematical response but with several advantages for FPGA implementation: (i) no input sample shift registers are required since each sample is fed to each tap simultaneously; (ii) the pipelined addition chain maps efficiently; (iii) filter latency is reduced; (iv) identical tap coefficient magnitudes can share multiplication hardware because taps receive the input sample simultaneously.

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Figure 1: Mathematically identical full-parallel FIR filter structures

a Standard b Transposed c Transposed FIR with multiplier block

Note that for maximum sampling rates, all multiplication hardware can be pipelined. In Fig. 1c, the coefficient multipliers of the transposed FIR have been replaced with a multiplier block (detailed in Section 3) that generates all required multiples of the filter input using cascaded adds, subtracts and shifts. This filter architecture is known to be a highly area efficient method of implementing fixedcoefficient, full-parallel FIR filters [1]. It is the multiplier block that determines filter implementation efficiency regardless of hardware platform. Effective synthesis of multiplier blocks for low FPGA area is the focus of this work.

3. Multiplier Block Synthesis for Low FPGA Area

3.1. Multiplication Hardware Operation and Area Estimation Figure 2 shows an example multiplier block (also referred to as a graph) that multiplies the input by 3, 13, 21 and 37 in two clock cycles (the logic depth of the block is also 2). Multiplication is achieved using only adds, subtracts and shifts which map very efficiently to FPGA architectures. As an example, the input is fed to the 3 adder untouched and after being left shifted once (multiplied by two). Hence, the output of the 3 adder is 2x x 3x as required. This product can then be used as a graph output to be fed to the filter summation chain (refer to Fig. 1c) and, if required, routed internally to generate further multiples of the input. For efficiency, multiplier blocks need only generate ve, odd integers since negative filter coefficient weightings can be restored at the summation chain by subtracting the ve equivalent generated by the multiplier block. Odd valued block outputs can be leftshifted en-route to the summation chain to generate even-valued coefficient multiplications. Pipelining multiplier blocks ensures high clock rates are achieved when implemented on FPGA hardware. Note that multiplier blocks usually contain a mixture of adders and subtractors, but the adder cost of a block refers to the number of adders and subtractors. Hence, the adder cost of Fig. 2 is 5. Note that adders may also be referred to as the graph vertices. In this paper, we use the Xilinx Virtex-II FPGA family [2] for implementation analysis and hence area will be measured in Virtex-II slices. The multiplier block in Fig. 2 is quoted as costing 25 slices. This is calculate ed by counting the number of flip-flops inferred by the multi-bit signals crossing pipeline boundaries and dividing by 2 since there are two flip-

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flops per slice. Equation (1) uses the set S which contains the bit-widths of all N multi-bit signal pipeline boundary crossings to obtain a slice estimate e: N (1) e= Sa a=1 2
Figure 2: Multiplier block: five adders, two pipeline stages costing 25 slices

3.2. Multiplier block Synthesis Optimization Goals Multiplier block synthesis has received a great deal of attention in recent decades. The majority of research has concentrated on producing algorithms to synthesize multiplier blocks with the optimization goal of minimum adder cost. Bull and Horrocks [3] introduced the concept of representing multiplier blocks with graphs , showed the problem to be NP-complete and defined several minimal adder synthesis algorithms. Dempster and Macleod [4] identified limitations in this work and defined the n-dimensional reduced adder graph (RAG-n) algorithm which is generally regarded as the primary reference for minimal adder multiplier block synthesis [5, p. 96]. Additional techniques using canonic signed digit (CSD) and sub expression sharing have also been proposed to minimize adder cost [6, 7]. Although the majority of research in this area has focused on full-parallel DSPs, recent work by Demirsoy et al. [8, 9] incorporates multiplexers to allow efficient FPGA implementation of time multiplexed filters and direct cosine transform (DCT) processors. In [10], Dempster et al. defined the C1 synthesis algorithm with the optimization goal of minimizing multiplier block logic depth to reduce power consumption. C1 aims to minimize power consumed by reducing the amount of logic transitions caused by long glitch paths through cascaded arithmetic logic. Note that logic toggling caused by glitch paths through more than one adder does not occur in fully pipelined multiplier blocks. In general, from a hardware perspective, the motivation for minimum adders has been to reduce filter complexity for very large scale integration (VLSI) implementation where adder cost dominates the area requirement. However, FPGAs have a fixed architecture for implementing digital logic, not the blank canvas of VLSI/ASIC design. Hence, algorithms synthesizing multiplier blocks for low FPGA area must operate with regard to FPGA architectures for

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best results. In this paper, we show that the classic multiplier block synthesis goal of minimizing adders does not minimize FPGA hardware cost; we will, however, define a new algorithm that does.+ 3.3. Comparing Adder Cost and Logic Depth for low FPGA Area Figure 3 shows a multiplier block that generates the same multiples of the input as the block shown in Fig. 2. However, the Fig. 3. block uses only four adders, whereas Fig. 2 uses one more (five). Conversely, four logic levels are required for the Fig. 3 block and only two are required in Fig. 2. Most importantly, using (1), the Fig. 3 block requires 44 slices compared to the 25 slices of Fig. 2. This is due to the increased number of pipeline boundary crossings in Fig. 3 caused by the extra logic levels of the block. Hence, in this case, fewer adders does not mean less FPGA area. It should be noted that architecture specific features may also influence area consumption. For example, a slight area reduction may be gained using the Virtex-II SRL16 shift registers to implement signal delays instead of individual flip-flops. However, such area reductions would not reduce the slice cost of Fig. 3 significantly. Also, there may be slices where a look-up table (LUT) is unused for multiplier block arithmetic logic but the corresponding flip-flop is in use to pipeline a signal. In such cases, synthesis/implementation tools may map logic for other functional blocks into the unused LUT. However, in a fully pipelined DSP data-path system, such functionality sharing of a single slice is less likely and would not signifi- cantly affect multiplier block area consumption. To summaries, the main research community goal of minimising adder cost is not applicable for minimising FPGA area cost. Instead, an algorithm performing synthesis for low FPGA area should aim to reduce signal pipeline crossings. This can be achieved by synthesising low-logic depth multiplier blocks and minimising signal bit-widths as far as possible. Note that these low FPGA area optimisation principles apply to any FPGA architecture containing a LUT/flip-flop pair structure (including the Xilinx Virtex-II family selected in this instance).The new reduced slice graph multiplier block synthesis algorithm
Figure 3: Multiplier block: four adders, four pipeline stages costing 44 slices

4. Minimised Adder Graph Algorithm

Before discussing the new reduced slice graph (RSG) synthesis algorithm, the minimised adder graph (MAG) algorithm must be introduced. MAG was defined by Dempster and Macleod [11] and generates minimum adder graphs consisting of shifts, adds and subtracts for implementing constant integer multiplication of individual values up to 12-bits (MAG was further extended to 19-bits by Gustafsson

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et al. [12]). Multiplication by a constant is common when implementing DSP on FPGAs, and efficient implementation has received attention from the research community. For example, Wirthlin and McMurtrey [13] utilise features of recent FPGA architectures to further reduce the area requirement of conventional constant coefficient multipliers. The implementation techniques described also allow for multiplication constants to be changed since it is not the structure of the logic that dictates multiplication values (asis the case with MAG) but rather look-up table contents. Using the MAG algorithm, Dempster and Macleod demonstrate a 16% average reduction in adder cost over CSD representation and show CSD to reduce average adder cost by 33% over binary representation. From an FPGA perspective, for single coefficients, these adder reductions also translate into hardware savings. In general, for each integer value in range, MAG finds numerous graphs for each value that all implement the required multiplication with the minimum number of adders/vertices. Dempster and Macleod suggest differentiating between these graphs by calculating the number of single-bit full adders required to implement each graph and selecting the graph requiring the least. This differentiation is motivated by attempting to minimise VLSI area consumed when implementing the multiplication. MAGalso generates a table containing the adder cost of each integer value in range. 4.1. MAG Extensions and Modifications Our MAG implementation was extended beyond the 12-bit range (imposed by Dempster and Macleod for physical RAM constraints) using the generic graph extension cases illustrated in [11]. Also, we noted the potential for greater differentiation between the multiple graphs found by MAG for each integer value in range. Instead of using one level of differentiation with the single-bit full adder count metric described in [11], we implemented two metric levels (primary and secondary) to allow one best graph to be selected. For each integer, the primary metric selects the subset of graphs with minimum logic depth and from that subset, the secondary metric selects the graph with lowest vertices sum to minimize bit-widths. These new metrics reflect the low FPGA area observations described previously and, in general, leave only one best graph per integer, whereas the sole single-bit full adder metric selects multiple graphs from which an arbitrary choice must be made. Note that up to and including adder cost 3, for each integer in range, the modified MAG implementation stores and allows extension/branching from every graph found. This allows full searching of the graph space up to and including cost 4. From cost 4 graphs upwards (i.e. beyond 12-bits), only one best graph (as selected by the new primary/secondary metric system described reviously) is stored and used per integer for extending to higher cost graphs. This restriction is for practical implementation concerns of available physicalRAMand algorithm run-time. 4.2. New RSG Algorithm Design Dempster and Macleods RAG-n algorithm attempts to synthesize all required multiplications by initially placing all coefficients of adder cost 1 (determined using MAG) into the multiplier block and then building higher cost values using combinations of shifts, adds and subtracts of other adder outputs within the block. For example, in Fig. 3 generated using RAG-n), the 3 adder is synthesized first and all other coefficients are built from it. This approach leads to high logic depth blocks and hence pushes up FPGA area requirement. Note that RAG-n synthesizes multiplier blocks in two stages: (i) optimal stage; (ii) suboptimal heuristic stage. If the multiplier block is fully synthesized after stage (i), Dempster and Macleod show that their algorithm ensures the absolute minimum number of adders to implement a given block. If stage (ii) is required, a suboptimal multiplier

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5. Synthesis Algorithm Comparison Varying Coefficient Bit-Width

VHDL filters were generated to compare RSG, RAG-n and C1 using the specifications of Section 3.2, coefficient bitwidth varied from 1 to 20 and filter length fixed at 51 taps. Note that the multiplier block solution space expands exponentially as coefficient width increases, meaning algorithm output is similar at lower widths. Also, as stated in Section 4.2, the MAG algorithm implementation only uses the full search space for integers up to adder cost 4. From cost 5 onwards, branching is only performed from the single best graph of each value for reasons of available RAM. Hence, from around 15-bit coefficients upwards (cost 5 upwards), synthesis algorithm results are likely to converge. Were the MAG algorithm to be allowed to store and branch from all graphs from cost 4 upwards, the difference in results between the algorithms shown around 12-bits would be expected to continue instead of converging at 15-bits. Figure 4a demonstrates that RSG requires less FPGA area in general, although Fig. 4b shows that RSG uses more adders in all cases. Figure 4c confirms that FPGA area is correlated with flip-flop usage. LUT data (Fig. 4e) is correlated with adder usage with RSG using fractionally more LUTs in general. For logic depth (Fig. 4d). Filter generation varying coefficient bit-width show in table 1.
Figure 4: Results for VHDL filter generation varying coefficient bit-width (length: 51 taps)

a FPGA hardware area b Multiplier block adders c Flip-flop usage d Multiplier block logic depth e LUT usage

Slice Reduction Algorithm for Low Power and Area Efficient FIR Filter Using VLSI Design
Table 1: Filter generation varying coefficient bit-width

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6. Conclusions
The classic research community optimisation metric of minimising multiplier block adder cost has been demonstrated not to minimise FPGA hardware for full-parallel pipelined FIR filters. Reducing flip-flop count through minimising multiplier logic depth has instead been shown to yield the lowest area solutions. The new RSG algorithm has been defined to embody this design principle. The results presented establish a clear area advantage of RSG over prior algorithms for typical filter parameters with comparable maximum clock rates. In addition, the industrial relevance of the transposed FIR with multiplier block architecture and the RSG algorithm has been established through comparison with filters implemented using the DA technique.

References
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