Real-time estimation of zero crossings of sampled signals for timing using cubic spline interpolation

[EN] A scheme is proposed for hardware estimation of the location of zero crossings of sampled signals with sub-sample resolution for timing applications, that consists in interpolating the signal with a cubic spline near the zero crossing and then finding the root of the resulting polynomial. An it...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autor: Aliaga, Ramón J.|||0000-0002-2513-7711
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Fecha de publicación:2017
País:España
Institución:Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV)
Repositorio:RiuNet. Repositorio Institucional de la Universitat Politécnica de Valéncia
Idioma:inglés
OAI Identifier:oai:riunet.upv.es:10251/140833
Acceso en línea:https://riunet.upv.es/handle/10251/140833
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Interpolation
Splines (mathematics)
Estimation
Timing
Hardware
Registers
Real-time systems
TECNOLOGIA ELECTRONICA
Descripción
Sumario:[EN] A scheme is proposed for hardware estimation of the location of zero crossings of sampled signals with sub-sample resolution for timing applications, that consists in interpolating the signal with a cubic spline near the zero crossing and then finding the root of the resulting polynomial. An iterative algorithm based on the bisection method is presented that obtains one bit of the result per step and admits an efficient FPGA implementation using fixed-point representation. In particular, the root estimation iteration involves only two additions, and the initial values can be obtained from FIR filters with certain symmetry properties. It is shown that this allows online, real-time estimation of timestamps in free-running sampling detector systems with improved accuracy with respect to the more common linear interpolation. The method is evaluated with simulations using ideal and real timing signals and estimates are given for the resource usage and speed of its implementation.