TABLE OF CONTENTS Digital signal processing (DSP) techniques are being applied to the implementation of various stages of video capture, processing, storage, and distribution systems for a number of reasons, including:
Improved cost-performance considerations
Future product-enhancement capabilities
Greatly reduced alignment and testing requirements
A wide variety of video circuits and systems can be readily implemented using various degrees of embedded DSP. The most important parameters are signal bandwidth and S/N, which define, respectively, the required sampling rate and the effective number of bits required for the conversion. Additional design considerations include the stability of the sampling clock, quadrature channel matching, aperture uncertainty, and the cutoff frequency of the quantizer networks.
DSP devices differ from microprocessors in a number of ways. For one thing, microprocessors typically are built for a range of general-purpose functions and normally run large blocks of software. Also, microprocessors usually are not called upon to perform real-time computation. Typically, they are at liberty to shuffle workloads and to select an action branch, such as completing a printing job before responding to a new input command. The DSP, on the other hand, is dedicated to a single task or small group of related tasks. In a sophisticated video system, one or more DSPs may be employed as attached processors, assisting a general-purpose host microprocessor that manages the front-panel controls or other...
