What's your sine? Finding the right algorithm for digital frequency synthesis on a DSP

A new approach to direct digital frequency synthesis uses a combination of lookup tables and trigonometric identities that lends itself to more efficient implementation on digital signal processors. By Carlos Abascal, Harris Corp. Perhaps the most fundamental building block of all communication equipment is the sine wave generator. We have ample knowledge of how to generate sine waves using analog electronic hardware. In modern electronics, however, more and more functions once performed by analog circuitry are now performed by digital signal processors or field-programmable gate arrays. Those two types of ICs are the main approaches for developing and implementing signal processing: either the programmable DSP or the ASIC/FPGA. Lately, high-performance DSPs are using concepts, such as execution pipelining and parallelism of... [read full story]