Reconfigurable Pink Noise Generator for Audio Testing

Abstract

Pink noise is a type of noise with 1/f spectrum which contains the same distribution of power for each octave in its power spectra. It is a common signal source used for testing audio devices because its frequency spectrum is similar to the nature environment for the human auditory system. Filtering a band-limited white noise source in -3dB per octave decay is a common and low-cost method to generate pink noise. The advantage of using Xilinx System Generator for FPGA-based hardware design is to provide a system-level modeling tool on simulation, execution and also analysis. The aim of this project is to build a MATLAB-Simulink model and to use Xilinx System Generator to implement the design on FPGAs. The Simulink model of the generator has been implemented. The focus of the reconfigurable design was to implement a highly efficient filter with two different methods, Mcode programming and base-unit blocks, which are provided by System Generator and MATLAB. Finally, the precision of the output pink noise signals are compared and evaluated.