Design and Development of FPGA-Based Spectrum Analyzer

Abstract

Spectral analysis is important in many signal processing applications as it provides information about the strength of different frequency components present in a time-domain signal. A spectrum analyzer is a tool commonly used to visualize real-world signals in the frequency domain and is capable of performing a variety of signal measurements like power, distortion, harmonics, and noise. This paper discusses design, implementation, and validation of digital spectrum analyzer on the FPGA platform. Spectral analysis of acquired input data is performed by Fast Fourier Transform (FFT). To enhance spectral analysis accuracy and sensitivity, multiple FFT magnitude outputs are accumulated over windowed sections of the input. Design implementation has been carried out on a Virtex5 xc5vlx50 FPGA device.