Evolutionary design and FPGA implementation of digital filters

This paper discusses the use of evolutionary algorithms to design digital circuits. It is shown that evolutionary design can be fully compliant with the existing design methodologies. Moreover, the evolutionary design is capable to perform a better exploration of the design space, and therefore it can find solutions having different features with respect to conventional design. In some cases, evolved circuits can have better performances, or they can be optimized with respect to different parameters. An example on design of a multi-rate digital filter with reduced power consumption is presented and discussed. FPGA implementation demonstrates that evolutionary design can lead to both area and power saving with respect to conventional design.