A novel low-power and in-place split-radix FFT processor

Split-radix Fast Fourier Transform (SRFFT) approximates the minimum number of multiplications by theory among all the FFT algorithms. Since multiplications significantly contribute to the overall system power consumption, SRFFT is a good candidate for implementation of a low power FFT processor. In this paper we present a novel low power SRFFT processor using a modified radix-2 butterfly structure. With the proposed butterfly unit, the address generation scheme for conventional radix-2 FFT could be applied to SRFFT and therefore it can avoid the complexity of address generation and interim data registers. Simulation results show that compared with a conventional radix-2 implementation, power consumption of the new processor is reduced by an amount of 11.7% and 18.3% for 16-point and 32-point FFT respectively.