Design, evaluation and fault-tolerance analysis of stochastic FIR filters

— Stochastic computing utilizes compact arithmetic circuits that can potentially lower the implementation cost in silicon area. In addition, stochastic computing provides inherent fault tolerance at the cost of a less efficient signal encoding. Finite impulse response (FIR) filters are key elements in digital signal processing (DSP) due to their linear phase-frequency response. In this article, we consider the problem of implementing FIR filters using the stochastic approach. Novel stochastic FIR filter designs based on multiplexers are proposed and compared to conventional binary designs implemented using Synopsys tools with a 28-nm cell library. Silicon area, power and maximum clock frequency are obtained to evaluate the throughput per area (TPA) and the energy per operation (EPO). For equivalent filtering performance, the stochastic FIR filters underperform in terms of TPA and EPO compared to the conventional binary design, although the stochastic design shows more graceful degrad...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2016
• Where: MR
• Authors: Ran Wang, Jie Han, Bruce F. Cockburn, Duncan G. Elliott
• Keywords: MR 2016, Robotics