446
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ACOUSTICS, SPEECH, AND SIGNAL PROCESSING, OCTOBER
1975
put
w(n)
by the relation
u(n)=
h(m)w(n-
m)
N-
1
m=o
where
h(m),
(m
=
0,
1,
.,
N
-
1) are the filter coefficients
and
N
is the duration of the unit sample response of the filter.
From (1) it is seen that the computation of an output point
depends only upon past and present values of
w(n)
and not
upon past values of any internal filter variables. Thus the filter
computations need only be made once for every Mth output
point. Furthermore,
it
is known that
w(n)
is nonzero
only
for
every Lth input point. Thus only one multiplication and addi-
tion must be performed for every Lth input point. Therefore
the effective number of multiplications and additions is
N/(LM)
per output sample: instead of
N
as predicted by a simple ap-
plication of (1). For
this
and other reasons to be discussed
later, we will assume for the remainder of this paper that the
low-pass filter is
a
linear phase FIR design used in a direct
form implementation.
111.
OPTIMUM
DESIGN
OF
MULTISTAGE
DECIMATORS
FOR SAMPLING
RATE
REDUCTION
In the previous section a general one-stage technique for
changing the sampling rate of a signal by the factor LIM was
discussed. For large changes in sampling rate, however, it is
generally more efficient to reduce the sampling rate
with
a
series of decimation stages rather than making the entire rate
reduction with one stage. In
this
way the simpling rate
is
reduced gradually resulting
in
much less severe filtering require-
ments on the low-pass filters at each stage. Bellanger
et
al.
[SI
and Nelson
et
al.
[8]
also have implemented sampling rate re-
ductions using several decimation stages; however they re-
stricted their results by only using factors of
2
at each stage.
Shively
[9]
considered a more general approach with integer
decimation for a two-stage design similar to that of Fig. l(b).
He also suggested a procedure for optimizing the two-stage de-
sign by properly choosing the decimation ratios of each
of
the
stages. In
this
section we extend and generalize the work of
Shively using the more general decimation stage shown in
Fig. 3(b). Design curves and formulas are presented for imple-
menting optimum decimators for a wide range of parameters
and conditions.
The basic multistage process for sampling rate reduction
with
K
stages is illustrated in Fig. 4(a) and a frequency domain
interpretation of this process
is
given in Fig. 4(b). The initial
sampling rate is
fro
and the fmal sampling rate is
fui
with in-
termediate sampling frequencies designated as
frl
,
fr2,
.
.
*,
fr(K-1).
The sampling rate reduction achieved by each stage
of the decimation process is denoted as
Di,
i
=
1,2,
-
.,
K and
therefore the intermediate sampling frequencies are given by
2This
does not imply that greater efficiencies can be obtained by
si-
multaneously increasing
L
and
M
as
both
Nand the
sampling
rate in
(1)
are proportional
to
L.
LPF-
STAGE
K
FINPUT
SAMPLING
RATE
OUTPUT SAMPLING RATE
0
fn
fs
frK fr(K-1)
0
f,
f,,
f--
(b)
Fig.
4.
(a) Illustration of a K-stage decimator and (b) frequency re-
sponse interpretation of this process.
The overall sampling rate reduction achieved
by
this process is
denoted as
D
and is given as
D
=
fro
/frK
K
=
n
Di.
(3)
i=1
In Fig. 4(b)
I
X[exp
j(27rflfu,,)J
I
represents the magnitude
of
the spectrum of
x(n)
and
I
Y[exp
j(hflfrK)]
I
corresponds to
the magnitude
of
the spectrum
of
y(n).
From the sampling
theorem, we recognize that the highest frequency
in
y
(n)
is
f,
which
is
f,<-.
frK
2
Because of practical considerations in the design of the low-
pass filters used in the decimation process, this bandwidth can
never be fully realized and the usable portion of the base-
band will always be somewhat less than
f,.
We denote this
bandwidth as being froh zero to
fp
corresponding to the band
over which the magnitude response of the composite
of
the
low-pass filters remains flat within specified tolerance limits of
1
k
6,.
Also
because of practical considerations a inakimum
toierance must be allowed for the magnitude response of the
low-pass filters in the stopband and this will be denoted as
6,.
We can now focus on the design requirements for each stage.
We will permit the most general
form
for each stage as dis-
cussed in the previous section [see Fig. 3(b)]
.
This form for
stage
i
is illustrated in Fig. 5(a). Li corresponds to the sam-
pling rate increase and
Mi
corresponds to the sampling rate de-
crease for stage
i.
As
there
is
a net sampling rate reduction
this
implies,Mi
>
Li.
Then