Design of Optimal Multiplierless FIR Filters

Abstract: This work presents two novel optimization methods based on integer linear programming (ILP) that minimize the number of adders used to implement a direct/transposed finite impulse response (FIR) filter adhering to a given frequency specification. The proposed algorithms work by either fixing the number of adders used to implement the products (multiplier block adders) or by bounding the adder depth (AD) used for these products. The latter can be used to design filters with minimal AD for low power applications. In contrast to previous multiplierless FIR approaches, the methods introduced here ensure adder count optimality. To demonstrate their effectiveness, we perform several experiments using established design problems from the literature, showing superior results.