aspien GmbH - analog signal processing

analog signal processing

The application of advanced signal processing algorithms is limited by the availability of powerful and energy efficient hardware implementations. In fact, for many high-speed applications it is nowadays not feasible to implement advanced signal processing algorithms on digital hardware due to area (i.e., cost) and power constraints. Power consumption is critical for both wireless and wire-line applications because of battery life and/or heat dissipation in highly integrated circuits. Furthermore, processing delay is often constrained by the application. One of the reasons for the complexity of the signal processing is that, in order to unfold its optimal performance, the processor needs to operate on real numbers in the form of analog signals. A state-of-the-art digital signal processor can only work with quantized versions of these real numbers. With decreasing number of quantization levels the performance of digital implementations degrades significantly and a so-called quantization loss occurs.

We address these challenges by means of more area and power efficient analog signal processors which outperform their digital counterparts by up to several orders of magnitude in terms of speed, area and/or power consumption. These analog signal processors work directly on the analog signals and thus exploit the full potential of signal processing algorithms without any quantization loss. Furthermore, power hungry analog to digital converters are avoided at the input of such an analog signal processor.

In case you would like to know how your product may benefit from the use of analog signal processing, please contact us for a free consultation at info@aspien.com