Novel approximate synthesis flow for energy-efficient FIR filter

The portability of emerging computing systems demands further reduction in the power consumption of their components. Approximate computing can reduce power consumption by using a simplified or an inaccurate circuit. In this paper, the energy efficiency of a finite impulse response (FIR) filter is improved through approximate computing. We propose an approximate synthesis technique for an energy-efficient FIR filter with an acceptable level of accuracy. We employ the common subexpression elimination (CSE) algorithm to implement the FIR filter and replace conventional adder/subtractors with approximate ones. While yielding acceptable rates of accuracy, the proposed flow can attain a maximum energy saving of 50.7% in comparison with conventional FIR filter designs.