Filter Optimization for Real-Time Digital Processing of Radio Frequency Signals: Application to Oscillator Metrology.

Area of Science:

• Radio Frequency Engineering
• Digital Signal Processing
• Clock Technology

Background:

• Software-defined radio (SDR) offers adaptable radio frequency (RF) signal processing.
• Ultrastable clocks require precise RF signal filtering to reject spurious signals and noise.
• Real-time RF processing for clock characterization demands efficient Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) implementation.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate optimization strategies for designing digital filters within SDR systems.
• To meet stringent spurious signal and noise rejection requirements for oscillator characterization.
• To minimize hardware resource utilization and adhere to timing constraints in FPGA implementations.

Main Methods:

• Developing filter design techniques optimized for SDR architectures.
• Analyzing filter performance based on configuration characteristics like coefficients and resolution.
• Tabulating filter throughput, resource occupation, and performance metrics.

Main Results:

• Identified filter design strategies that balance rejection performance with hardware resource efficiency.
• Demonstrated the ability to meet critical timing constraints for real-time RF processing.
• Quantified the trade-offs between filter complexity (e.g., number of multipliers) and performance.

Conclusions:

• The presented filter optimization technique is effective for SDR-based ultrastable clock characterization.
• This approach enables the design of high-performance RF filters within resource-limited FPGA environments.
• The methodology is broadly applicable to scheduling various signal processing blocks in SDR systems.