An All Digital Demodulator using Off-the-Shelf VLSI Technology

An all digital demodulator using off-the-shelf VLSI components has been developed at Harris Corporation, GCSD. VLSI technology such as the multiply accumulator (MAC), the numerically controlled oscillator (NCO), and the digital signal microprocessor (DSP uP) are utilized to yield a compact, flexible, microprocessor programmable design architecture. Specifically, a multirate BPSK demodulator has been designed using the digital VLSI implementation approach. Performance data, in the form of BER measurements, is given for the digital BPSK demodulator design. It is concluded that, due to a flexible architecture and good overall performance, the digital demodulator may become a popular demodulator implementation that can evolve further, as the state-of-the-art in digital VLSI technology evolves.