A Guide on Using Xilinx System Generator to Design and Implement Real-Time Audio Effects on FPGA

The enormous progress in communication technology has led to a tremendous need to provide an ideal environment for the transmission, storing, and processing of digital multimedia content, where the audio signal takes the lion's share of it. Audio processing covers many diverse fields, its main aim is presenting sound to human listeners. Recently, digital audio processing became an active research area, it covers everything from theory to practice in relation to transmission, compression, filtering, and adding special effects to an audio signal. The aim of this work is to present the real-time implementation steps of some audio effects namely, the echo and Flanger effects on Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA). Today, FPGAs are the best choice in data processing because they provide more flexibility, performance, and huge processing capabilities with great power efficiency. Designs are achieved using the XSG tool (Xilinx System Generator), which makes complex designs easier without prior knowledge of hardware description languages. The paper is presented as a guide with deep technical details about designing and real-time implementation steps. We decided to transfer some experience to designers who want to rapidly prototype their ideas using tools such as XSG. All the designs have been simulated and verified under Simulink/Matlab environment, then exported to Xilinx ISE (Integrated Synthesis Environment) tool for the rest of the implementation steps. The paper also gives an idea of interfacing the FPGA with the LM4550 AC’97 codec using VHDL coding. The ATLYS development board based on Xilinx Spartan-6 LX45 FPGA is used for the real-time implementation.