Managing software complexity in signal processing research

The author describes a large hierarchical software environment, based on C++, developed to support basic research into signal processing. There are two cornerstones of the environment: the signal object file and the math classes. From these, many useful higher-level abstractions have been built, including device-independent audio and modular speech recognition systems. This environment heavily embraces object-oriented programming philosophies and structured programming techniques. To date, it is one of the largest such environments implemented entirely in C++.<>