Signal processing

Digital signal processing (DSP) has become an essential part of nearly every product in today’s world. Any device that contains wireless connectivity, audio, video, measurement sensors or automatic control will require some form of DSP.

Our team of experts combine extensive knowledge of digital signal processing, complex software development and state-of-the-art processors with established tools and processes for developing ground-breaking and highly differentiated products for our clients. 

SDR has revolutionised communication systems in recent years – dramatically reducing timescales and cost, and eroding the dominance of digital ASICs.

Many of today’s standards-based communications systems are continually evolving and therefore benefit greatly from the flexibility of SDR, allowing enhancements and bug fixes to be incorporated with relative simplicity. This is particularly apparent in cellular (2G, 3G and 4G) standards and satellite communications.

The early digital signal processors have now evolved into highly complex system-on-chip (SoC) integrated circuits featuring multi-core architecture and acceleration engines to offload processing to more dedicated hardware units.

To achieve real-time operation while optimising the use of processing resources, our development teams carefully architect the firmware to complement the hardware. Understanding how DSP algorithms can be efficiently implemented within cycle and memory constraints and incorporating diagnostic facilities into the code are essential to enabling detailed visualisation of program execution.

We research and design algorithms using the industry standard tools provided in MathWorks MATLAB. Through rapid development, analysis and iteration of the algorithms, our development teams can quickly see if a design is viable before proceeding with implementation, which usually bears the biggest risks and challenges.

The engineers involved in the design of these algorithms are also deeply knowledgeable in the processing and memory constraints of hardware, thereby minimising the risk that designs cannot be implemented.

Digital audio and digital communications frequently combine within the products we develop – for example, in the audio codecs which carry voice over a satellite link or high-quality music over a short-range Bluetooth link.

Frequently, signal conditioning (such as acoustic echo cancellation or beamforming) may be required to enhance the audio and improve signal quality. Many of the applications we address involve significant power constraints, adding another dimension to algorithm and processing hardware design.

Over the last 30 years, our DSP expertise has been at the heart of many breakthrough projects, from the Prism 200 through-wall radar to the Videocore low-power multimedia processor that we spun out to form Alphamosaic Ltd.

These successes were made possible by the unique combination of skills we possess, bringing together expertise in mathematics and algorithm design, complex software development and software/hardware integration.

We remain at the forefront of DSP technology, pioneering the use of highly integrated, application-specific programmable processors, enabling the adoption of software-defined radio in wireless, cellular and satellite networks, and using small, low-power MEMS sensor in innovative location, tracking and medical applications.

Our considerable DSP skills are now being applied to problems that incorporate cutting-edge computer vision, machine learning and AI technologies.