Signed power-of-two term allocation scheme for the design of digital filters

It is well known that if each coefficient value of a digital filter is a sum of signed power-of-two (SPT) terms, the filter can be implemented without using multipliers. In the past decade, several methods have been developed for the design of filters whose coefficient values are sums of SPT terms. Most of these methods are for the design of filters where all the coefficient values have the same number of SPT terms. It has also been demonstrated recently that significant advantage can be achieved if the coefficient values are allocated with different number of SPT terms while keeping the total number of SPT terms for the filter fixed. In this paper, we present a new method for allocating the number of SPT terms to each coefficient value. In our method, the number of SPT terms allocated to a coefficient is determined by the statistical quantization step-size of that coefficient and the sensitivity of the frequency response of the filter to that coefficient. After the assignment of the SPT terms, an integer-programming algorithm is used to optimize the coefficient values. Our technique yields excellent results but does not guarantee optimum assignment of SPT terms. Nevertheless, for any particular assignment of SPT terms, the result obtained is optimum with respect to that assignment.