Evaluation of the hardware specialization techniques for vibration control applications

Logic circuit can be reduced, if any input is given as a constant. The derived circuit usually operates at a higher frequency, as the logic depth and layout area are reduced. Such technique is called as hardware specialization, since the circuit is specialized to specific input data. This study presents the quantitative evaluation results of hardware specialization for vibration control systems, using MATLAB/Simulink and Altera Cyclone III FPGA as evaluation platform. In case of the third order Butterworth low-pass filter, its logic scale was reduced to 40-56% of the original by fixing the gain parameters; the improvement of operational frequencies were 23-39%. In Hybrid Shaped Approach, the logic scale was reduced to 48% of the original by fixing the filter parameters, while the improvement of operational frequency was 43%. In Preshaping with a low-pass filter, the respective logic scales were reduced to 10.6%, 9.6%, and 1.2% of the original by fixing parameters, input data, and both. The respective improvements of operational frequencies were 53, 10, and 70%.