EECS 452: Digital Signal Processing Design Laboratory

Class Schedule

Class schedule (lecture dates, lab assignment due dates, exam dates, etc.) can be found here.

Class Overview

EECS 452 is a senior/graduate design course whose main focus is the application of real-time digital signal processing (including theory, software and hardware) to a multi-week team project. This course satisfies the CoE's major design experience requirement. The course consists of lectures, structured laboratory exercises, and team projects. The lectures and structured laboratory exercises are intended to provide a foundation for the team projects to build on. The lectures and structured laboratory exercises cover:

• Architectural features of DSP processors (arithmetic, memory organization, pipe lining, and use of special on-chip hardware),
• Amplitude quantization effects (in A/D and D/A conversion, waveform generation and digital filter implementation),
• Special on-chip hardware (serial ports, host ports, and timers),
• Programming of DSP processors,
• Design and implementation of FIR and IIR filters,
• FFT usage,
• Real-time concepts (interrupts, critical sections, threads of execution, etc.).

The laboratory exercises are based on use of the Texas Instruments TMS320C5510 DSK and the Xilinx Spartan-3 Starter Board. Programming will be in assembly language, C, VHDL and MATLAB.

Textbooks

There are no required books, but you might find the following useful.

• Real-Time Digital Signal Processing: Implementations, Applications and Experiments with the TMS320C55x , S.M. Kuo and B.H. Lee, Wiley, 2001.
• Circuit Design with VHDL, Volnei A. Pedroni, MIT Press, 2004.
• Digital Signal Processing, 4th ed. Proakis and Manolakis, Pearson, 2006.
• FPGA Prototyping by VHDL Examples, Pong P. Chu, Wiley, 2008.

Course policies

You are encouraged to interact with other students to discuss course material, form study groups for the exams, help each other learn VHDL and the CAD tools, and provide each other with debugging assistance, encouragement, and moral support. However, all individual assignments (i.e., homeworks and exams) are to be performed on your own, and all group assignments (labs and the project) are to be performed only by members of the group.

Referring to homeworks or projects from previous semesters is strictly forbidden.

The Engineering Honor Code obligates you not only to abide by this policy, but also to report any violations that you become aware of. Violations of this policy will be brought to the College of Engineering's Honor Council. For more information on the Honor Code, see the Honor Council web page. If you have any doubts about whether a certain level of collaboration is permissible, or have any other questions, contact the professor.

Laboratory Policies

Laboratory Access
The EECS 452 laboratory uses a key lock access system which allows students 24 hour, 7 day access. Students are free to use the laboratory during off hours (when no other class is using it) to complete labs, to work on the course project, or to pursue personal projects. Lab attendance at the regular times is required. Please make every effort to keep the lab clean and tidy. Also please turn off the lights and close the door shut if you are the last to leave!!

Laboratory Computers
The laboratory has nine stations each consisting of a Pentium computer, 19 inch monitor, Agilent oscilloscope, waveform generator, TI TMS320VC5510 DSP Starter Kit (DSK) and a Xilinx/Digilent Spartan-3 Starter Board. The Pentium systems are locally networked. Each student group has free access to these systems and may leave their programs resident between work sessions. However disks do fail, systems do crash, and students sometimes do accidentally delete files that they really hadn't meant to. It is strongly urged that at the end of each work session that source files be copied onto a USB memory stick as backup. Not doing so has cost precious time in past semesters.

Manuals and Handouts
A CD containing manuals documenting the hardware and software used in the EECS 452 laboratory will be provided for each student. Copies of lecture and lab handouts will be available on the course web page and for a few weeks following their being handed out in a wall bin located just to the left of room 4234 EECS. Failing to find a needed item, contact the instructor.

Assignments and Grading

During the class you will be expected to do labs, homework, a final project, and to take two exams. Those will be used to compute your grade as follows:

	Lab	20%
	Homework	10%
	Midterm	20%
	Final Project	50%

Laboratory
The structured laboratory experiments will be worked on in groups of two. The prelab exercises are to be done invidually and will count for 25% of the lab grade (i.e., 5% of the course grade). The intent of the prelab exercises is to determine a student's understanding of the current experiment and of the associated assembly code. The prelab exercises are due at the beginning of the associated lab period.

• Lab exercise 1: Code Composer Studio, C and C5510 memory spaces
• Lab exercise 2: Working with C5510/DSK peripherals
• Lab exercise 3: Introduction to the Spartan-3 Starter Board and VHDL
• Lab exercise 4: A/D, D/A, DDS, DTMF using C5510 and S3
• Lab exercise 5: FIR/IIR filter implementation, measuring transfer functions, XVGA use
• Lab exercise 6: DFT, real time spectra and display

A report on each week's lab work is required by each group of two students. The lab reports will count for 75% of the lab grade (i.e., 15% of the course grade). The reports should contain a brief introduction, a description of the experimental setup, a results section, and a discussion and conclusion section. The report need not be lengthy and but must be typed. Be complete and professional in your presentation. Reports are due 1 week from the date of when the lab met. The report grade will be reduced by 2% for each day late.

Homework
Homework covering the material presented in lecture will be assigned. Late homework will not be accepted once the solution has been passed out. The purpose of the homework is to reinforce the material covered in lecture and lab. The homework can be discussed with others, the instructor, and/or the GSI. However, all work (program code, plots, and the written homework) must be done individually.

Exams
A midterm exam will be given after completion of the structured laboratories. This will cover fundamental topics introduced in the lectures and the laboratory experiments. It is worth 20% of the course grade.

Project
Projects will involve the design and implementation of a real-time software package and/or hardware device based on use of DSP. More information on projects will be provided later in the semester.