Performance evaluation and optimal design for FPGA-based digit-serial DSP functions

As field programmable gate array (FPGA) technology has steadily improved, FPGAs are now viable alternatives to other technology implementations for high-speed classes of digital signal processing (DSP) applications. Digit-serial DSP architectures have been effective implementation method for FPGAs. In this work, a method of implementing digit-serial DSP architectures on FPGAs is presented, and their performance is evaluated with the objective of finding and developing the most efficient digit-serial DSP architectures on FPGAs. This paper discusses area costs and operational delays of the various digit-serial DSP functions and presents the area/delay models on Xilinx XC4000-series FPGAs. These area/delay models can make predictions of performance and hardware resource utilization before a lengthy layout and synthesis process is undertaken. The results show that the area/delay models proposed here are valid and the digit-serial DSP designs are promising candidates for efficient FPGA implementations.