Signal processing requirements in pan-European digital mobile communications

The authors give an overview of the basic functions and techniques of the user equipment of the proposed pan-European digital communications system. The multipath equalizer and channel decoder of the receiver together with the speech codec are identified to be the most complicated devices from the viewpoint of signal processing and integration. Three different approaches for implementation, using general-purpose digital signal processing (DSPs), application-oriented DSPs, and dedicated full custom VLSI, are discussed. With particular reference to the speech codec, a detailed analysis of the full-custom VLSI implementation is made and the results are compared with the other approaches. It is concluded that even though the full-custom approach offers considerable benefits in terms of power consumption and use of silicon area, other matters such as flexibility in operation and further development also have to be taken into account.<>