592 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CIRCUITS AND SYSTEMSII: EXPRESS BRIEFS, VOL. 60, NO.

9, SEPTEMBER 2013
Multiplierless Implementation of an Aliasing-Free
Digital Pulsewidth Modulator
Katharina Hausmair, Student Member, IEEE, Peter Singerl, and Christian Vogel, Senior Member, IEEE
AbstractDigital pulsewidth modulators are used to transform
nonconstant amplitude signals into pulsed signals, such that the
information lying in the signal amplitude is encoded in the widths
of pulses. Because of the inherent aliasing distortion in digital
pulsewidth-modulated signals, additional signal processing steps
are required to make pulsewidth modulation (PWM) suitable
for applications like digital audio amplication or burst-mode
radio-frequency transmitters. These processing steps, however,
entail an undesirable increase in computational effort. This brief
presents a multiplierless implementation of a digital aliasing-free
pulsewidth modulator using lookup tables, adders, and arithmetic
shifts only. Mathematical equations of asymmetric double-edge
PWM are given, as well as a modied aliasing-free version of this
PWM technique that directly integrates the distortion-avoiding
signal processing steps into the pulsewidth modulator. Based on
these equations, a multiplierless implementation of the aliasing-
free PWM (AF-PWM) is developed. Simulation results obtained
with a Simulink xed-point model show that the proposed mod-
ulator implementation provides a feasible solution for realizing
AF-PWM with low computational effort.
Index TermsAliasing-free digital pulsewidth modulation
(PWM), burst-mode radio-frequency (RF) transmitters, computa-
tional effort, switched-mode power ampliers (PAs).
I. INTRODUCTION
D
IGITAL pulsewidth modulation (PWM) can be used to
create the switching signals for driving highly efcient
switched-mode power ampliers (PAs), used in, e.g., digital
audio applications [1], or to generate the pulsed signals required
in burst-mode radio-frequency (RF) transmitters [2]. For these
applications, a digital pulsewidth modulator encodes a noncon-
stant amplitude input signal into a two-level pulsed signal by
encoding amplitude information into pulses of different widths.
The pulsed signal, or a passband equivalent of it, is applied to
the PA. After the PA, the amplied input signal, or its passband
equivalent, respectively, can be retrieved by using an adequate
lter. The high quality of the retrieved signal is crucial for the
aforementioned applications.
Manuscript received December 12, 2012; revised May 13, 2013; accepted
May 31, 2013. Date of publication July 3, 2013; date of current version
September 11, 2013. This work was supported by the European Unions
Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/20072013) under Grant Agreement
248277. This brief was recommended by Associate Editor Y. Miyanaga.
K. Hausmair was with the Graz University of Technology, 8010 Graz,
Austria. She is now with the Department of Signals and Systems, Chalmers
University of Technology, 412 58 Gteborg, Sweden (e-mail: hausmair@
chalmers.se).
P. Singerl is with Inneon Technologies Austria AG, 9500 Villach, Austria
(e-mail: Peter.Singerl@inneon.com).
C. Vogel is with the Telecommunications Research Center Vienna (FTW),
1220 Vienna, Austria (e-mail: c.vogel@ieee.org).
Digital Object Identier 10.1109/TCSII.2013.2268431
There are several well-established methods to encode a non-
constant amplitude signal into a pulsed signal, such as
modulation [3] or various comparator-based PWM methods
[4]. All these methods, however, have in common that they
inherently suffer from distortion in and around the frequency
band of the input signal, which prevents retrieving a high-
quality signal after amplication and the ltering operation
[5], [6]. Hence, a solution that eliminates the distortion while
maintaining low computational effort has to be found.
Several methods have been proposed to reduce or eliminate
the effects of the distortion. In [7], a noise cancellation circuit
that requires additional analog hardware is proposed. The au-
thors of [8] present an algorithm to optimize the noise shaped
coding performance of modulators. In [6], a modulator
comprising noise shaping loop lters in combination with a
digital feedforward error correction method is introduced. This
concept is further elaborated in [9]. In [5], the authors intro-
duce a modied version of asymmetric double-edge PWM that
eliminates all destructive aliasing distortion but requires a large
number of multiplications and trigonometric functions, which
increases the computational effort compared to a comparator.
In this brief, we show that the method proposed in [5] can
be implemented by using lookup tables (LUTs), adders, and
arithmetic shifts only. The suggested implementation there-
fore allows for generating practically distortion-free digital
pulsewidth-modulatedsignals ina computationallyefcient way.
II. ASYMMETRIC DOUBLE-EDGE PWM
A digital pulsewidth modulator transforms the amplitude sig-
nal a[n] [0, 1] into a train of two-level pulses y[n] of different
widths at a xed pulse period T
p
. Hence, the information lying
in the amplitude of a[n] is encoded in the widths of the pulses
of y[n]. A common PWM method is asymmetric double-edge
PWM [4], where the pulse train y[n] consists of asymmetrical
pulses that are centered around the midpoint of the pulse period
T
p
. The edges of the pulses, i.e., the transitions between the two
levels 0 and 1, can be determined by nding the intersection
points of the amplitude signal a[n] with a triangular reference
wave r[n] that is periodic in T
p
. This process is depicted
in Fig. 1.
Note that, for the PWM method described here, the am-
plitude signal a[n] has to fulll certain constraints. First, the
bandwidth of a[n] must be adequately smaller than the refer-
ence wave frequency f
p
= 1/T
p
[10]. Second, the amplitudes
of a[n] have to lie within the interval [0, 1] [5]. In order to use
the described asymmetric double-edge PWM for signals that do
not meet the latter requirement, appropriate preprocessing steps
1549-7747 2013 IEEE
HAUSMAIR et al.: MULTIPLIERLESS IMPLEMENTATION OF AN ALIASING-FREE DIGITAL PULSEWIDTH MODULATOR 593
Fig. 1. Illustration of the asymmetric double-edge PWM process, where the
pulsed signal y[n] is determined by the intersection points of the amplitude
signal a[n] with the triangular reference signal r[n]. Note that, even though, in a
digital system, the signals consist of discrete values, for a more comprehensible
illustration, the signals are drawn like continuous-time curves.
have to be applied. For a real-valued signal, proper scaling and
adding a bias could solve the problem. For a complex-valued
signal, a polar system architecture or an in-phase/quadrature
component (IQ) system architecture can be implemented [11].
In a polar architecture, PWM is performed on the magnitudes
of the signal, and phase modulation is performed subsequently
[5]. In an IQ architecture, PWM is performed on real and
imaginary parts of the signal separately, requiring a signal
combiner afterward.
The asymmetric double-edge PWM operator P(a[n], r[n])
is [5]
P (a[n], r[n]) =

1, for a[n] r[n]

0, for a[n] < r[n]
(1)
and the pulsewidth-modulated signal y[n] is given by [5]
y[n] = a[n] +

k=1
2(1)
k
k
sin (ka[n]) cos

2k
T
s
T
p
n

(2)
where T
s
is the system clock period.
Conventional digital asymmetric double-edge PWM can be
implemented with low computational effort by using a com-
parator. However, as has been shown in [5], the nonlinear
non-band-limited operation of the pulsewidth modulator in-
evitably induces aliasing in the resulting pulsed signal y[n]. The
aliasing effect causes distortion in and around the frequency
band of the amplitude signal a[n]. Hence, when recovering the
amplitude signal a[n] from the pulsed signal y[n], distortion
remains within the recovered signal. Due to the aliasing effect,
conventional PWM is not suitable for applications where the
amplitude signal a[n] has to be recovered with high quality
from the pulsed signal y[n] [5], [12], e.g., in burst-mode RF
transmitters or digital audio applications. Therefore, the authors
of [5] developed an aliasing-free PWM (AF-PWM) method,
where aliasing is completely avoided.
III. AF-PWM
The AF-PWM method is based on the conventional com-
parator PWM (C-PWM) described in Section II. To avoid the
aliasing effect, the PWM operator P(a[n], r[n]) is slightly
altered in a way that limits the frequency content of the pulsed
signal y[n], which is then given by [5]
y[n] = a[n] +
K

k=1
2(1)
k
k
sin (ka[n]) cos

2k
T
s
T
p
n

(3)
where K is a nite number that ensures that the frequency
content of the pulsewidth modulator output y[n] is limited to
an amount that avoids destructive aliasing in and around the
frequency band of the amplitude signal a[n]. As a consequence,
the AF-PWM cannot be implemented by a comparator. Instead,
the pulsed signal y[n] is obtained by computing (3). In order
to do so, a large number of multiplications and sine and co-
sine computations are required, where the computational effort
increases with the number of harmonics K. These operations
might be costly when using xed-point hardware such as
application-specic integrated circuits and eld-programmable
gate arrays [13], and they make a straightforward implemen-
tation of the AF-PWM in hardware expensive compared to a
comparator. Hence, an implementation with low computational
effort is required in order to make the AF-PWM a viable
candidate for practical applications. Our work therefore aims
at developing an implementation of the AF-PWM that does not
require computationally expensive operations like multiplica-
tions and trigonometric functions.
IV. IMPLEMENTATION
In order to avoid multiplications and trigonometric functions,
the use of LUTs is targeted as an alternative. To obtain such a
solution, (3) is rewritten as
y[n] = a[n] +
K

k=1
(1)
k
k

sin

2k
T
s
T
p
n +ka[n]

sin

2k
T
s
T
p
n ka[n]

. (4)
By exploiting the 2 periodicity of sine waves, (4) can be
written as y[n] = a[n] +y
1
[n] y
2
[n], where
y
1
[n] =
K

k=1
(1)
k
k
sin

2k

[n] +
a[n]
2

y
2
[n] =
K

k=1
(1)
k
k
sin

2k

[n]
a[n]
2

(5)
[n] = mod

T
s
T
p
n, 1

(6)
is introduced to facilitate a convenient hardware realization.
From the given equations, it can be seen that, for a specic
amplitude a[n], both terms y
1
[n] and y
2
[n] approximate inverse
T
p
-periodic sawtooth waves, where different values of a[n]
merelyinduce different phase shifts, without changingthe shapes
of the waves at all. This is illustrated in Fig. 2, where the saw-
tooth waves for K=10 are depicted for two examples of a[n].
In order to implement the PWM with LUTs, we propose to
compute the LUT entries y
LUT
[i] as
y
LUT
[i] =
K

k=1
(1)
k
k
sin

2k
1
2
N
LUT

(7)
594 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CIRCUITS AND SYSTEMSII: EXPRESS BRIEFS, VOL. 60, NO. 9, SEPTEMBER 2013
Fig. 2. Illustration of one period T
p
of the sawtooth waves y
1
[n] and y
2
[n] using K = 10 for different amplitude signals a[n], resulting in different time shifts.
(a) Sawtooth waves for a[n] = 0. (b) Sawtooth waves for a[n] = 0.5.
Fig. 3. Block diagram of the implementation assuming modular arithmetic, where also the xed-point word lengths are indicated.
where 2
N
LUT
is the number of values stored in the LUT and the
index i = 0, . . . , 2
N
LUT
1. Hence, a LUT comprises values
for one complete sawtooth period.
To obtain y
1
[n] and y
2
[n] from the LUTs, the indices i
1
[n]
and i
2
[n] for the amplitude signal a[n] at the current time index
n need to be computed as
i
1
[n] =

mod

[n] +
a[n]
2
, 1

2
N
LUT

i
2
[n] =

mod

[n]
a[n]
2
, 1

2
N
LUT

(8)
where the number representation of i
1
[n] and i
2
[n] has to be
consistent with the representation of i.
Finally, the aliasing-free pulsewidth modulator output can
then be computed by
y[n] = a[n] +y
LUT
[i
1
[n]] y
LUT
[i
2
[n]] . (9)
In hardware, the multiplications by 1/2
N
and 2
N
can be
completely avoided by implementing them as arithmetic shift
operations, denoted by (xN)

=x/2
N
and (xN)

=x2
N
.
Furthermore, due to periodicity, [n] can be implemented
as a periodic counter with step size T
s
/T
p
, running within the
interval [0, 1).
Fig. 3 depicts the block diagram of the implementation. The
modulo operations in the given equations can be enforced by
using modular arithmetic, which automatically ensures that
numbers wrap around after they reach a certain value. By
implementing the AF-PWM method according to the block di-
TABLE I
CALCULATIONS REQUIRED FOR STRAIGHTFORWARD
AND MULTIPLIERLESS IMPLEMENTATIONS OF
THE AF-PWM IN MATLAB SIMULINK
agram in Fig. 3, the computational effort becomes independent
of the number of harmonics K. The computational effort can
be reduced, since there are no multiplications or trigonometric
functions required. Table I compares the number of required
calculations for the multiplierless implementation to a straight-
forward implementation of (3). It can be seen that, for the
straightforward implementation, the number of multiplications
as well as sine and cosine computations increases with the num-
ber of harmonics K, while the proposed implementation does
not require any multiplications or sine and cosine computations
at all. However, the proposed implementation requires the use
of at least two LUTs. The number of entries 2
N
LUT
in the
LUTs determines the accuracy of the output signal y[n]. This
is investigated in Section V.
Note that the proposed modulator implementation can also
be used to implement the conventional two-level asymmetric
HAUSMAIR et al.: MULTIPLIERLESS IMPLEMENTATION OF AN ALIASING-FREE DIGITAL PULSEWIDTH MODULATOR 595
Fig. 4. Block diagram of PWM in a polar architecture.
double-edge PWM given in (2). This can be done by using a
perfect sawtooth wave for y
LUT
[i], instead of an approximation.
V. SIMULATION RESULTS
For the evaluation of the proposed PWM implementation, a
complex-valued baseband signal x[n] is used, where x[n] =
a[n]e
j[n]
. The PWM was implemented in a polar system
architecture, like in [5] and [6]. In such an architecture, PWM
is performed on the magnitude signal a[n] = |x[n]|, and phase
modulation of the pulsed signal y[n] is performed subsequently
to obtain the signal y

[n] = y[n]e
j[n]
. A block diagram of
a polar PWM architecture is depicted in Fig. 4. For such an
architecture, the signal y[n] is used for time-domain evaluation,
while the phase-modulated signal y

[n] is used for frequency-

domain evaluation [5].
The multiplierless implementation described in Section IV
has been modeled in the Matlab Simulink xed-point environ-
ment. In order to present an application-independent evaluation,
for the interpretation of the results, ratios of the parameters T
s
and T
p
and the bandwidth B
x
of the input signal x[n] are given
rather than absolute values. Following the recommendations in
[5], the settings for these parameters for all presented simula-
tion results are chosen as T
p
/T
s
= 14 and 1/(T
p
B
x
) = 7. The
xed-point word length is denoted as N
FP
.
A. Time-Domain Evaluation
In order to show that the proposed implementation works
properly, simulations have been conducted where the proposed
implementation is congured to emulate the C-PWM. This can
be done by using a perfect sawtooth wave for y
LUT
[i], i.e.,
K = , instead of an approximation. The obtained results are
compared to the results obtained by a xed-point Simulink
model of the conventional C-PWM. The LUT settings and the
xed-point word length are N
LUT
= N
FP
= 16. Fig. 5 shows
a representative example of pulsed signals y[n] generated with
both modulators for the same amplitude signal a[n]. It can be
seen that the results are identical, which veries the correct
operation of the proposed implementation.
B. Frequency-Domain Evaluation
For applications like digital audio and RF transmitters, the
amplied input signal x[n] or a passband equivalent has to
be recovered from the amplied pulsed signal by a lter [5].
In order to achieve high quality of the recovered signal while
ensuring feasibility of the ltering operation, it is important that
the distortion that is caused by the PWM process in and around
the input signal frequency band is kept low. The dynamic range
Fig. 5. Comparison of simulation results obtained with Simulink xed-point
models of (a) the proposed implementation emulating conventional PWM and
(b) the conventional C-PWM. The resulting pulsed signals y[n] are identical.
(a) Proposed PWM implementation. (b) C-PWM.
(DR) serves as a measure of the amount of distortion introduced
in the frequency band of interest. It is dened as the difference
between the average power of the desired signal and the power
of the surrounding distortion given in decibels. To evaluate the
performance, the DR for frequency bands adjacent to the band
of x[n] was used, i.e., for frequencies f
adj
(B
x
/2, 2B
x
].
It has been shown in [5] that the AF-PWM is practically
free of distortion in the frequency band of interest and hence
outperforms the comparator-based PWM in terms of DR. How-
ever, when generating the pulsed signal y[n] with the proposed
implementation in xed-point arithmetic, amplitude quantiza-
tion error is introduced. This error is due to the nite word
length N
FP
of the xed-point numbers and due to the nite
number 2
N
LUT
of values stored in the LUTs. The amplitude
quantization error decreases the DR. The effects of amplitude
quantization on the proposed AF-PWM implementation are
shown in Fig. 6. The gure shows examples of power spec-
tral densities (PSDs) of aliasing-free phase-modulated pulsed
signals y

[n] with K = 5, obtained for simulations with dif-

ferent xed-point word lengths N
FP
and LUT entries 2
N
LUT
,
where N
LUT
= N
FP
. The gure also shows the result of
the C-PWM for N
FP
= 8, as well as the unquantized input
signal x[n]. Comparing the results of the AF-PWM to those
of the comparator-based PWM, it can be seen that, even for
N
LUT
= N
FP
= 8, the AF-PWM outperforms the comparator-
based PWM in terms of DR. By using N
LUT
= N
FP
= 16,
the proposed implementation of the AF-PWM achieves a DR
of around 89 dB, which is an improvement of around 60 dB
596 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CIRCUITS AND SYSTEMSII: EXPRESS BRIEFS, VOL. 60, NO. 9, SEPTEMBER 2013
Fig. 6. PSDs of pulsed signals y

[n] generated with C-PWM and the

model of the proposed AF-PWM implementation for different N
LUT
= N
FP
.
The PSD of the unquantized input signal x[n] is also shown.
TABLE II
DRS IN DECIBELS FOR AF-PWM FOR DIFFERENT
N
LUT
AND N
FP
VALUES
compared to the comparator-based PWM implementation,
which reaches a DR of only 29 dB. Hence, even for xed-point
arithmetic of short word lengths, the superior spectral properties
of the AF-PWM persist.
Note that the DR of the C-PWM does not increase for
N
FP
> 8. This indicates that the distortion caused by aliasing
outweighs the amplitude quantization error for the C-PWM.
C. Considerations on Further Effort Reduction
The xed-point word length N
FP
and the LUT resolution
N
LUT
are independent and can therefore be chosen differently.
Table II shows the DRs of simulations with different N
FP
and N
LUT
values. From the results, it can be concluded that
the lower bound of the DR is determined by the xed-point
word length N
FP
, i.e., for a xed N
FP
, no improvement
can be achieved by choosing N
LUT
> N
FP
. However, for a
xed number of LUT entries 2
N
LUT
, the resulting DR can
be improved signicantly by using xed-point operations with
N
FP
> N
LUT
. Hence, by carefully investigating the system
requirements while taking into account the input signal char-
acteristics, the computational effort of the AF-PWM can be
further reduced.
Note that the xed-point word length N
FP
does not have
to be the same for all signals throughout the implementation.
Hence, the computational effort could possibly be further im-
proved by optimizing the xed-point word length N
FP
and the
number of LUT entries 2
N
LUT
that is required to obtain the
desired quality of results. However, the purpose of this brief is
to present the idea behind the implementation algorithm rather
than to optimize it in every possible aspect.
VI. CONCLUSION
Amultiplierless implementation of digital PWMthat is based
on the AF-PWM method in [5] has been presented. For the im-
plementation, LUTs and arithmetic shift operations are utilized
in a way that allows for completely avoiding computationally
expensive multiplications and trigonometric functions. Simula-
tions demonstrate that the proposed implementation of the AF-
PWM provides a simple technique with only low computational
effort to implement high-DR digital PWM, which makes it
suitable for applications employing switched PAs, such as
digital audio or burst-mode RF transmitters.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The Telecommunications Research Center Vienna is funded
within the program Competence Centers for Excellent Tech-
nologies (COMET) by Bundesministerium fr Verkehr, In-
novation und Technologie (BMVIT), Bundesministerium fr
Wirtschaft, Familie und Jugend (BMWFJ), and the City of
Vienna. The COMET program is managed by the sterreichis-
che Forschungsfrderungsgesellschaft (FFG).
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