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I need to sample an ADC at 4096 * 60 = 245760 times per second, but the system clock is 200 MHz.

This gives a sample period of 813.80208333.... clock cycles.

I've determined that I can achieve the correct average rate if I have 19 sample periods of 813 cycles for every 77 sample periods of 814 cycles.

Given the current time in clock cycles, what is the simplest way for me to calculate the next sample time so that I have the correct average sample rate while minimizing the error?

EDIT: Ultimately, I need to produce (after some processing) a stream at 256 * 60 = 15360 samples/sec. If it is easier to sample at a regular fraction of the clock speed and then re-sample to the required lower rate, that would also work.

The platform is a microprocessor with a custom, minimal, 32-bit integer instruction set. The base clock rate is 200MHz, and the processor is running at 50 or 100 MHz, so at the desired sample rate, I have only a few hundred instructions per sample to do all of my processing.

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    $\begingroup$ What I would do is sample at a native ADC rate, and resample to the required rate. $\endgroup$
    – MBaz
    Commented Dec 11, 2021 at 17:43
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    $\begingroup$ Normally if one "needs" to sample at 245760sps, one's application will work just fine if you sample at 250000sps. Is there a reason you can't do that? $\endgroup$
    – TimWescott
    Commented Dec 11, 2021 at 18:54
  • $\begingroup$ I need to calculate 60 FFT windows per second, hence a final sample rate of 60 * some power of two. $\endgroup$
    – Campground
    Commented Dec 13, 2021 at 21:18

3 Answers 3

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Update: The OP has stated in the comments below this post that the intention is to actually create output samples at a 15.36 KHz rate and that the sampling, as a simple submultiple of 200 MHz, can be done at a 125 KHz rate. This results in interpolate by $3 \times 2^7$ and decimating by $5^5$. With care of not letting the lowest rate go below 15.36 KHz, the following sequence could be implemented with a similar polyphase structure further detailed below for the 200 MHz to 245.76 KHz resampler:

125 KHz in, three successive stages of interpolate by 4, decimate by 5, followed by an interpolate by 6, decimate by 5, decimate by 5.

As a a polyphase the first bank would be 4 FIR filters each being loaded in parallel at the input rate of 125 KHz but the output computations would be done at the 4/5 rate of 100 KHz, the second stage would repeat this with 4 FIR filters each being loaded at the rate of 100KHz with the output computations done at the 4/5 rate of 80 KHz, the third stage identically would have it's outputs computed at 64 KHz. After these three interpolate by 5 and decimate by 4 polyphase stages, the following interpolate by 6 and decimate by 5 would be implemented as 6 polyphase filter each being loaded in parallel at the 64 KHz rate with outputs computed at the 6/5 rate of 76.8 KHz. The final decimate by 5 brings us to the desired output rate of 15.36 KHz. Having multiple smaller stages as I have done here, ultimately significantly reduces the computational requirements.

See the details below for the 200 MHz to 245.76KHz resampler that would follow a similar process.

—————-

Prior answer based on OP’s originally stated question:

If the OP only has a 200 MHz clock and wants to create output samples at the 245.76 KHz clock with samples produced at that actual clock rate with reference to the 200 MHz master clock, then a PLL would likely be needed to reclock/sample the data at the lower rate assuming such a clock rate is not already available (even if the data is sampled at 200 MHz and then interpolated as detailed below or with other approaches).

If the OP just wants to do rate matching between samples clocked in at 200 MHz to provide the same data at the 245.76 KHz rate, or just wants to produce the data that would be equivalent to that sampled at the lower rate, this can be accomplished with a fractional rate resampler on the data sampled at the 200 MHz clock rate or any reduced rate to the extent the existing analog anti-alias filter allows (otherwise modifications to that filter may also be required to avoid aliasing degradations). This is quite commonly done and particularly straightforward when your desired sample rate is a fractional ratio of the sampling clock. Further this will allow for any possible higher rate processing such as additional filtering on your data which may greatly simplify the analog anti-alias filter used.

This approach could proceed as follows:

Sample the data at 200 MSps.

Do any "high-rate" processing that would be helpful at this rate, in particular this would involve filtering prior to resampling the data (as part of the resampling architecture and necessary in the same regard that an anti-alias filter is required prior to any sampling).

The common factors of your two sample ratios of 200 MHz and 245.76 KHz are $5^7 /( 2^5 3)$. This means you can derive your desired lower sampling rate with the combination of interpolating by $2^5 3$ and decimating by $5^7$. As I will show, this can be accomplished efficiently and simply with polyphase filtering and will also neatly provide the samples at the output sampling rate desired.

Below shows a candidate architecture showing a resampling as done with decimation and interpolation (filter to eliminate aliasing, downsample, upsample, interpolation filter, ...) and how this same process would map to polyphase filtering (using the same filter coefficients. Notably, none of the internal clock rates shown need to be actually created, these are just the effective average rates. All nodes shown are internally buffered at any higher rate (likely the 200 MSps clock an sub-integer ratios. The only requirement is that each output sample is ready when clocked at the output clock rate and the buffering is sufficient to make up for the slop for the actual internal clocks used. As long as the input and output clock rates are synchronized, the overall architecture provides a consistent input/output rate so that no overflow / underflow can actually occur.

An output clock at 245.76 KHz is required in any event and if this is not phase-locked to the 200 MHz clock then additional care and consideration must be made on clock frequency offsets. Additional buffering would then be needed (and this is true for any implementation) to allow for the maximum number of sample differences based on the largest expected frequency offset and maximum time duration of the signal. This is only true when the ratio of the input sample rate to output sampling rate is actually higher than the numbers given (in which case buffers fill).

If it is known that there is no energy above 4 MHz after sampling with the ADC (due to current anti-alias filter used), then the first stage can be completely bypassed and decimation can be done by simply selecting every 25th sample at the ADC, OR dividing the ADC clock by 25 and sampling directly at 8 MSps. The 8 MSps data can then proceed with the architecture below at the 8 MHz node.

resampling

To follow the above diagram for the polyphase implementation, the first filter bank consists of 25 3-tap FIR filters with the first value of each filter input in sequence by the input data at the 200 MSps rate: each new sample fills the input of each subsequent filter, thus each filter has data shifting in at the lower 8 MHz rate and thus each filter in that bank operates as an 8 MSps FIR filter. Once each filter is input (after 25 input samples), the outputs of each of the 25 filters are summed to provide output samples at the 8 Msps rate and then the next 25 input samples are shifted in. Each output sample is entered into the next filter bank consisting of 8 5-tap FIR filters in parallel, such that the same output sample is input into all of the filters concurrently. The outputs of these 5 filters are commutated at the 64 MSps rate by sequencing through each output, but we only select every 25th value from this which provides the needed decimate by 25 as indicated in the upper diagram. Therefore the 2.56 MSps stream shown is achieved by selecting the first output, and then for the second sample effectively jumping forward 25 modulo 8 samples which ends up advancing to the next filter in the bank at this lower rate (notice that we never run anything at the 64 MSps rate, but immediately go the the 2.56 MSps rate!). The next interpolate by 4 and decimate by 25 is achieve is the 4x6 block as 25 modulo 4 at the 409.6 KSps output which also is an advance of one sample at that rate. Finally the 3x5 provides the interpolate by 3 which is then decimated by 5 as 5 modulo 3 or an advance of every other sample at this final output: We start with the top row as the first output sample, skip the second row and go to the bottom row as the second output sample, and then skip the top row and go to the second row as the third output sample, and so on (or simply reorder the rows to be 1-3-2). This results in a highly efficient implementation considering the relatively low clock rates in which all the filters have to operate. Note that the number of coefficients used in each of the filter banks comes directly from the originating resampling design as in the upper portion of the figure, and this is given by the passband and stopband requirements of these filters which is driven by overall distortion requirements. Actual numbers needed could be more or less than what I show here depending on the actual requirements. Please refer to this post for further details on the implementation of polyphase filter resampling. After reading the details there, the following example of the first decimate by 25 polyphase section will be more meaningful.

What follows demonstrates the performance that can be achieved in terms of minimizing distortion and optimizing resources by concentrating filter rejection only where it is needed using multiband least squares filter design (with firls in MATLAB, Octave and Python scipy.signal). Below is the frequency response of the 75 tap FIR that I mapped into the first 25x3 polyphase filter bank, where the stop-bands were defined by the locations of the red dots in the figure, minimizing the number of coefficients needed. Here I confirmed my initial 75 tap estimate was sufficient for a design requirement of less than 0.05 dB passband ripple and greater than 100 dB of rejection for any of the 12 decimation regions that could fold into the DC to 245.76 KHz desired passband. The coefficients of this same FIR filter map directly to the coefficients used in the polyphase filter bank with "row to column" mapping by decimating the same FIR filter coefficients resulting in all-pass filters of the same input with different fractional delays (polyphase). Note how with this approach we can quantify all distortion easily in the design process directly and modify the complexity accordingly (less coefficients if more distortion is acceptable).

FIR 75 response

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    $\begingroup$ Is there any submultiple of 200 MHz you can sample at, and are you insensitive to jitter such that you can sample the ADC with your microprocessor? Ideally you would use a fractional integer ratio between the two if that was possible so you can work from the factors of each rate to see if there is a solution for your purposes. $\endgroup$ Commented Dec 13, 2021 at 19:17
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    $\begingroup$ @GalenElfert not sure if it was clear to you but the implementation I show does not run faster than 8MSps— if you have 100s of operations at the 100 MHz clock rate, this should not be an issue. Can you sample at 100 MHz and then serial to parallel your data in at the 8 MHz rate shown? $\endgroup$ Commented Dec 13, 2021 at 19:23
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    $\begingroup$ (Or better sample at 25 MHz to stay with the factors I used, and with paralllel to serial I mean buffer the data at the higher rate and shift into your filters at the lower rate- although you would likely not have enough input pins to do that externally. If you use 25 MHz then the first stage would be 5 filters instead of the 25 I show) $\endgroup$ Commented Dec 13, 2021 at 19:27
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    $\begingroup$ I can only sample by reading the ADC data register from the processor. I need to sample 4 channels, integrate 2 of them, then filter and downsample to a lower rate (15.26 KHz). Because of the downsampling, some jitter is permissible. But 250 KHz is probably the highest rate I can sample at. It seems like what I'm really looking for might be a way to downsample from 250 KHz (or possibly 125 KHz) to 15.26 KHz without having to interpolate to a higher rate in between, OR, a way to sample at a multiple of 15.26 KHz, allowing for some jitter, by using a non-integer average sample rate. $\endgroup$
    – Campground
    Commented Dec 13, 2021 at 21:15
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    $\begingroup$ With the polyphase approach you effectively get the higher interim sampling rates without ever going there. I suggest seeing is there is any other fractional ratio you can do within your allowable rates. A sub multiple integer of 200 MHz makes sense and then a fractional rate translation from there. $\endgroup$ Commented Dec 13, 2021 at 21:18
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If efficiency isn't an issue, instead of a polyphase for resampling (which may need a large phase table), you can simply recompute the taps of an interpolation windowed Sinc FIR filter every sample. That works no matter how nearly-irrational the sample rate ratios are.

Pseudo-code here: http://www.nicholson.com/rhn/dsp.html#3 (uses a von Hann, but other windows might show better characteristics.)

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    $\begingroup$ hotpaw, spot on! once in my life, i actually did an asynchronous sample rate converter running on an early 21062 SHArC . I just incremented a floating point register, removed the integer part (and applied it to the pointer to the samples) and used the fractional part to look up which pair of sets of polyphase coefficients, and then with the remainder of the fractional part, linearly interpolated between these adjacent subsamples. I sorta see for a fixed and rational sample rate ratio doing this upsample/downsample thing, but I don't really see why it's the best way to do it. $\endgroup$ Commented Dec 12, 2021 at 6:29
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    $\begingroup$ Oh, and a windowed-sinc, using a Kaiser window works really well. also firls() or firpm() works really well, but a window-sinc will guarantee that your interpolated signal goes straight through the original sample points. $\endgroup$ Commented Dec 12, 2021 at 6:35
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    $\begingroup$ A hybrid approach might be to interpolate the window function from a large table, but directly compute the sine function for each Sinc filter tap for each new sample result point. $\endgroup$
    – hotpaw2
    Commented Dec 12, 2021 at 14:47
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    $\begingroup$ But remez equiripple focuses its (pre/post)time domain noise. Whereas a window function spreads out the noise in time creating a smoother dither. Both due to being of finite length, thus imperfectly band limiting, thus noise generating. $\endgroup$
    – hotpaw2
    Commented Dec 12, 2021 at 17:26
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    $\begingroup$ Yes. I normally don't use firpm(). I most often use firls(). But sometimes I've used kaiser() times a sinc function. The stopband and transition width performance might be better with least squares but windowed sinc guarantees that the interpolated signal goes through the sampled value points. T $\endgroup$ Commented Dec 12, 2021 at 23:48
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You want to sample at $(200 \mathrm {MHz}) \frac{96}{78125} = 245760 \mathrm{Hz}$

The following assumes that your "hiccup" method works well enough (it'll introduce some multiplicative noise into your signal).

It also assumes that you have a timer circuit, driven by your 200MHz clock, that will let you select the division ratio for the next count on the fly. This is definitely a thing if you're using an FPGA, and something you may be able to do with a sufficiently good microprocessor (I think I could make an STM32F4xxx or STM32F7xxx microcontroller do this, for instance).

  • Initialize an accumulator to 0
  • Loop:
    • if the accumulator value is less than 78125, set the timer for 814 counts and add 814 * 96 to the accumulator
    • else if the accumulator value is greater than 78125, set the timer for 813 counts and add (813 * 96 - 78125) to the accumulator
    • Wait for the timer to trigger
    • On the timer trigger, start an ADC conversion
    • On the timer trigger, repeat the loop

Figuring out how to do the above in your chosen technology is left as an exercise to the user.

Note that this can be expanded to work with any ratio. For instance, instead of using 96 and 78125, you could use 245760 and 200000000 (these numbers will fit on a 32-bit machine). Or you could use $N$ and $2^{32}$, with $N = \left \lfloor 2^{32} \frac{245760\mathrm{Hz}}{200\mathrm{MHz}} \right \rfloor$. That would give you an actual frequency with an error of less than 40ppm from your nominal, and if you found that it was a bit wrong you could vary it in steps of $\frac{200\mathrm{MHz}}{2^{32}}$, which is way more precision than you'll need if your whole "hiccup sampling" premise works.

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  • $\begingroup$ This is what I was looking for. Unfortunately, quickly simulating this algorithm didn't produce the correct average sample rate. Too many at 813 and not enough at 814. $\endgroup$
    – Campground
    Commented Dec 13, 2021 at 21:26
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    $\begingroup$ Try the version that adds by 96 up to 78125 -- or I got the 19 and the 77 reversed. $\endgroup$
    – TimWescott
    Commented Dec 13, 2021 at 21:29
  • $\begingroup$ I made a slight change and it's now generating the correct sequence: if accumulator is < 78125, then set time for 814 and add 19 to accumulator, else set timer for 813 and subtract 77 from accumulator $\endgroup$
    – Campground
    Commented Dec 15, 2021 at 18:29

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