Decisive structures for multirate FIR filter incorporating retiming and pipelining schemes

Purpose Very large-scale integration (VLSI) digital signal processing became very popular and is predominantly used in several emerging applications. The optimal design of multirate filter with improvement in performance parameters such as less area, high speed and less power is the challenging task in most of the signal processing applications. This study aims to propose several effective multirate filter structures to accomplish sampling rate conversion. Design/methodology/approach The multirate filter structures considered in this work are polyphase filter and coefficient symmetry-based finite impulse response filter. The symmetry scheme particularly brings down the complexity to significant extent. To bring improvement in speed, delay registers are inserted at appropriate path with the help of pipelining and retiming scheme. Findings In this paper, the three tasks have been considered. First, the polyphase coefficient symmetry and modified polyphase (MP) structure is designed. Second, the pipelining is applied to the polyphase structure and the obtained results are compared with the polyphase structure. In third, retiming is applied to the polyphase structure and the performance comparison is carried out. The structures are realized for various orders, and the comparative analysis is carried out with the filter order N = 12, 30, 42, 8, 11 and 24 and the results are stated. The performance of all the accomplished structures is analyzed using Altera Quartus with the family cyclone II, device EP2C70F672C6. The results show that the multirate filter using pipelining and retiming offers better performance when examining with the conventional structures. Retimed and pipelined MP structure achieves a speed enhancement of about 33.81% when examining with the conventional polyphase (CP) structure with retiming and pipelining for N = 24 and M = 5. Likewise, the 2/3 structure of pipelined coefficient symmetry approach offers area reduction of about 54.76% over 2/3 structure of pipelined polyphase approach for N = 30 with little reduction in power. The fine grain pipelined and retimed MP structure with N = 11 and M = 3 avails critical path delay reduction of about 28.15% when examining with the corresponding fine grain pipelined and retimed CP structure. Originality/value The proposed distinct structures offer better alternative to conventional structures because of the symmetric coefficients, performance enhancement using pipelining and retiming based rate conversion structures. The suggested structures can be used for achieving different rates in software radios.