Transforming Floating-Point Algorithms to Fixed-Point Implementations

Many digital signal processing and communication algorithms are first simulated using floating-point arithmetic and are later transformed into fixed-point arithmetic to reduce implementation complexity. This transformation process may take most of the design time for complex designs and may involve a long series of manual ad-hoc design choices. This book provides methods to find optimum word lengths efficiently, implement low-power fixed-point arithmetic by word length reduction techniques, and automate the transformation process from floating-point to fixed-point arithmetic. The automation step provides a design tradeoff curve of signal quality vs. implementation complexity for the system, which allows the designer to pick any operating point on the tradeoff curve. The book should help in developing fixed-point hardware or software implementations from floating-point representations, and should be especially useful to professionals who are developing high-speed or low-power hardware or software.