A continuously variable digital delay element

Abstract

The author describes an FIR (finite-impulse-response) filter which synthesizes a controllable delay. By changing the delay the filter has the ability to interpolate between samples in the data stream of a band-limited signal. Because high sampling rates are not required, the filter is especially suited for implementation in a digital signal processor (DSP), and has been implemented in a real-time DSP. The interpolator can be used as a practical way to reconstruct an original band limited signal from samples taken at the Nyquist rate. The variable delay filter can also be used as a more general computational element. Performance results are presented.