High-radix residue arithmetic bases for low-power DSP systems

This paper investigates the use of residue arithmetic as a tool to reduce the switching activity in a DSP system. As shown the output data sequence of binary-to-residue converters is decorrelated, output switching activity is decreased in practical cases, when compared to switching activity in an two´s-complement based system. Experimental results provide power consumption details for binary-to-RNS converters. Furthermore, a new high-radix binary-to-residue converter architecture is proposed. Finally, RNS bases comprising both radix-2 and radix-3 moduli, suitable for low-power systems are proposed and the impact of conversion is quantified.