A low-power parallel design of discrete wavelet transform using subthreshold voltage technology

ABSTRACT

The Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT) is a means to analyze the frequency content of a signal and has extensive uses, including the JPEG2000 codec. Many portable and battery operated applications of DWT are expected in the near future that require a low power implementation of this transform. In this paper, a parallel VLSI implementation of a 2D lifting-based DWT processor is presented that is scalable from 2 to 256 parallel units. This design benefits from an efficient data distribution module to the parallel units, which constitutes a small overhead, and is able to significantly benefit from voltage scaling to achieve energy efficiency. In our design, the number of parallel units is increased and their speed is reduced through voltage scaling, while maintaining a constant throughput. Our results show that the optimal operating voltage of the parallel units, for a target throughput of 200MHz,4 is 386mV. This is below the threshold voltage, which is the voltage that turns the transistors on. Since operating a circuit in subthreshold voltage consumes 100+ times less power than running it at nominal voltage, our design is able to provide the same throughput as a reference pipelined implementation with 26 times less power consumption.

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INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  C. Computer Systems Organization
  C.3 SPECIAL-PURPOSE AND APPLICATION-BASED SYSTEMS
      Subjects: Signal processing systems

General Terms:
Design, Measurement, Performance

Keywords:
low power, parallel, subthreshold, wavelet