Adaptive error-cancellation for low-power digital filtering

Abstract

This paper presents a low-power digital filtering technique derived via algorithmic noise-tolerance (ANT). The proposed technique achieves substantial energy savings via voltage overscaling (VOS), where the supply voltage is scaled beyond the minimum (referred to as V/sub dd-crit/) necessary for correct operation. The resulting performance degradation is compensated for via an adaptive error-cancellation (AEC) algorithm. In particular, we employ an energy optimum AEC to optimize the energy-performance trade-off and reduce the overhead due to ANT. It is shown that the proposed AEC technique is well-suited for designing low-power broadband signal processing and communication systems. Up to 71% energy savings over optimally voltage-scaled conventional systems can be obtained in the context of frequency-division multiplexed (FDM) communications without incurring any performance loss.