HIPRO - Digital Signal Processing for Audio Applications (IST-1999-20380)

Design and development of the digital modules for the Digital to Analog Converter, and Digital Signal Processing for the digital audio amplifier using DSP and FPGA. 

The HIPRO system is a digital amplification unit. Digital amplifier constitutes a system, which receives digital input and produces analogue waveform for the loud speakers by using solely digital stages. Amplifier's functionality main concept lays on a digital to analog converter's capability of having as input various digital formats, such as the Pulse Code Modulation (PCM), processing the waveforms and converting the signal into Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) format. PMW format is converted into analogue waveform on a low pass filter at the output of the amplifier. 
The system uses digital signal processing techniques in order to achieve the performance of a "high end" audio reproduction system. Due to this fact, the design has excluded all forms analogue amplification and feedback circuits. The advantages of such designs are: the use of a single amplification stage and the use of minimal stages between the source and the output stage. THese result in minimal distortion and alterations to the original signal. Another important feature of such systems is the power efficiency of the output, which is 90% due to the switching functionality of the output.

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