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Fully Digital Low-Power Implementation of an Audio Front-End for Portable Applications

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Applications in Electronics Pervading Industry, Environment and Society (ApplePies 2018)

Abstract

This work presents a fully digital implementation of an audio front-end for portable applications developed in a low-power perspective. Such platform acquires audio samples through a four digital Pulse Digital Modulation (PDM) microphones array and implements two-channel (left and right) beamformers to perform speech enhancement. The system also features a low-power Voice Activity Detector (VAD) for the implementation of source localization or noise reduction algorithms. Finally, the processed data can be converted into a 16-bit resolution Pulse Code Modulation (PCM) format and then transmitted through a standard Integrated Interchip Sound (I2S) interface. The front-end has been implemented onboard a Microsemi IGLOO nano Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA), reaching a power consumption of only 2.264 mW. The low-power architecture and the implemented functionalities make the system a promising front-end for audio speech portable applications.

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Correspondence to Gabriele Meoni .

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Meoni, G., Pilato, L., Ciarpi, G., Palla, A., Fanucci, L. (2019). Fully Digital Low-Power Implementation of an Audio Front-End for Portable Applications. In: Saponara, S., De Gloria, A. (eds) Applications in Electronics Pervading Industry, Environment and Society. ApplePies 2018. Lecture Notes in Electrical Engineering, vol 573. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-11973-7_52

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-11973-7_52

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-11972-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-11973-7

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