DSP Engineering, need some information - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: matrixofdynamism
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: January 10, 2012, 04:12:22 am
content: I had never heard about DSP before I had joined by EE course. There was one module which gave some insight into this subject. Later I realized that DSP Engineering is actually a full fledged field of EE. And peope are employed and work as DSP Engineeers. What I don't get is how come this term is not often heard around? We do hear Comptuer Scientists and even about Meteorologists and Oceanoligst and Egyptologists e.t.c But not about DSP Engineering? How come?Besides this, why is it that DSP Engineers are paid so much? And why is it also that DSP Engineer Jobs usually need a PhD in this field to get employed? What exactly is a person working as DSP Engineer going to do? When I see a book on DSP I only come across FIR, IIR filters and Window functions e.t.c but don't know what the DSP Engineer does with them in the real world applications.Could anyone enlighten me on this issue?

author: NiHaoMike
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 10, 2012, 04:55:52 am
content: My best friend Tiffany Yep (who is also a model, but that's another story) does digital communications engineering, which involves a lot of DSP. Most of her DSP programming is actually done with Verilog on FPGAs as opposed to chips often called "DSPs". If such a design makes it into mass production, it is implemented on an ASIC if it's high volume or left on a FPGA if low volume.I have done a few designs on Microchip's dsPIC platform. In that case, it works exactly like programming any other processor, except the processor has optimizations to make it faster at DSP. Note that low speed DSP can be done with general purpose processors, as is often done in multimeters.Then there's audio and video processing that make use of special "DSP" ASICs. In particular, video is extremely well suited to parallel processing. All the video cards out there are really very specialized DSP boards.So basically, "DSP engineering" is too broad of a term.

author: A-sic Enginerd
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: January 10, 2012, 11:47:50 pm
content: It's a crapload of some really ugly math. And then working out how to apply that math to a circuit (or more correctly, build the circuit that implements the math).It's usually applied to things like video, audio, or data comms technologies.It applications are fairly wide, but as mentioned, yeah it usually takes a lot of education to break into it. I have seen people get into it that started someplace else (such as ASIC design), then do a combination of self-taught and an occasional college course. That's why they get paid comparatively pretty big bucks - even amongst engineers, not terribly many people are cut out to do it.

author: NiHaoMike
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 11, 2012, 02:22:51 am
content: I can tell you from experience that college does not teach enough to actually make a real world DSP system. Best way to start is to play around with audio DSP. Get something to run DSP on (you can use a PC, although expect a lot more latency than with a dedicated platform) and just play around with altering the sound in software. It's extra fun if you play a musical instrument (especially a guitar) through your design.

author: gregariz
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 11, 2012, 03:21:58 am
content: Quote from: matrixofdynamism on January 10, 2012, 04:12:22 amOne of the changes that has lead to DSP emerging now as a game changer is that the FPGA makers have available DSP libraries that you no longer have to understand much of the hardware - as a result alot of DSP programmers are now coming in through Computer Science routes now rather than EE. Similarly the compiler makers have been distributing libraries. There's also the Matlab DSP library who's code can now be synthesized directly into C, verilog or VHDL. Even Labview has DSP capability and VHDL transfer capability. Up until the late 90's these tools were not available and EE's had to write their own libraries, often in assembler due to a lack of processing speed. There were relatively few CS grads working in the area at that time.The intensity of the Math involved is the reason that there are a lot of PhD's working in the field. Someone with a few clues needs to write the algorithm's for your new LTE cell phone modulator/demodulator.

author: Tris20
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: November 10, 2013, 08:47:01 pm
content: Just thought I'd give this a bump. I'm doing a degree in electronics with music so DSP seems like a logical choice for me later on.It would be great if more people who have experience in the DSP field could chip in with some of their experiences, how they got into the field of dsp and anything they would suggest a young engineer to look into in order to make life a lot easier for themselves later on?Thanks in advance

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 10, 2013, 09:28:07 pm
content: DSP is doing calculations on sampled signals. There is much hype around DSP needing fast processors, bleeding edge FPGAs, etc. In reality you can use anything to run a DSP algoritme as long as it is fast enough to do all the calculations on a sample before the next sample arrives. If you want to get into DSP you need to know how to implement various digital filters and other signal processing building blocks.

author: miceuz
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: November 10, 2013, 09:40:11 pm
content: I have a CS degreen and am doodling around with DSP on my own currently. It's a quite factinating topic. For the basic intro I'd recommend this recource:http://www.dspguide.com/pdfbook.htmThere is some math in it, but it's really well broken out.

author: Tris20
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: November 11, 2013, 09:10:09 pm
content: Yeah that looks like a really well broken down book just looking at the chapters. I've already sent an order forthisso I think I'm ok for books just now. I know this may seem a naive question but bearing in mind I am still dipping my toe in the water, why are so many different algorithms needed? Why not just use the same ones? Or , is it a case of, 'project x' has a signal that needs to have bands of 4-6k amplified at variable rates and everything else attenuated and you have to write the necessary code and mathematics which does this?So far I know DSP involves using filters, writing up algorithms and using matlab." If you want to get into DSP you need to know how to implement various digital filters and other signal processing building blocks."Could you clarify what is meant by other signal processing building blocks? And implement in what way? Simply using and understanding something like FIR filters and in an assembly language and applying it to a device?Thanks for the replies so far

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 11, 2013, 09:16:53 pm
content: Well besides filters which come in many forms depending on roll-off, phase shift and pass/stopband ripple there is FFT, Goertzel, modulation, demodulation, echo cancelling, dynamics compression, etc, etc.