Sinónimo Geral: MOIRO

Sometime ago, my friends at Embedded Dreams asked me if I was interested in doing the firmware for one of their kits – the “Luny Sound Delirium“, which is a cool digital software synthesizer with 2 oscillators, a lot of knobs and endless input possibilities. Since this seemed a lot of fun, and I never did anything audio related before at a microcontroller level,  I said yes and started working on it.

That’s when I discovered the  Direct Digital Synthesis (DDS) algorithm and how to use it to create a digital signal generator.

This is an example of it’s usage, to create a sine wave up to 15KHz. It uses an Arduino (and its PWM), a voltage divider, a RC filter (which removes the strong noise components at the PWM frequency and at odd harmonics of that frequency), a coupling capacitor (remove the DC component) and a headphone jack (to plug it in the microphone of the laptop).

Oscillator schematic

The following sketch generates a 440Hz frequency sinewave (audio sample), but you can try different frequencies in the sketch or better yet,  add a frequency control knob using one of the analog inputs of the Arduino so you can control  it while is playing.

/*
* DDS - Direct digital synthesis example for sinewave generation.
*
* The implementation of the DDS relies upon integer
* arithmetic. The size of accumulator is N-bits.
* Assuming that the period of the output signal is
* 2*pi rad, the maximum phase is represented by 2^N.
* During one sample period the phase increases by the
* phase increment which lead us to:
* - outputFrequency(phaseIncr) = (samplingFrequency / 2^N) * phaseIncr  (1)
*
* The later can be rewritten:
* - phaseIncr = outputFrequency * resolution
*
* where resolution is:
* - resolution = 2^N / samplingFrequency  (2)
*
* Also:
* - N=log2(samplingFrequency / stepFrequency)+0.5 (3)
* - maximumOutputFrequency = samplingFrequency / 2
*
* For a better analog reconstruction of the signal we use:
* - maximumOutputFrequency=(samplingFrequency / 4) (4)
*
* According to (4) and for a maximum output frequency of
* 15KHz, a 62.5KHz sampling frequency was chosen.
* with (3) we can derive the accumulator as 16 bits wide
* (for sake of commodity), and according to (2) we'll
* have a resolution of 1.0486. Since we're using fixed
* point arithmetic, we'll scale the resolution by a
* factor of 2^16 (to maintain some accuracy):
* - N=16, resolution=(2^16 * maximumOutputFrequency)  /  (samplingFrequency)
*
* The minimum frequency generated is for phaseIncr=1 :
* - minimumFrequency = samplingFrequency/2^N
*/

#include <avr/pgmspace.h>
#include <avr/sleep.h>

// Sinewave lookup table for waveform generation
static const uint8_t  sineTable[] PROGMEM =
{
0x80,0x83,0x86,0x89,0x8c,0x8f,0x92,0x95,
0x98,0x9c,0x9f,0xa2,0xa5,0xa8,0xab,0xae,
0xb0,0xb3,0xb6,0xb9,0xbc,0xbf,0xc1,0xc4,
0xc7,0xc9,0xcc,0xce,0xd1,0xd3,0xd5,0xd8,
0xda,0xdc,0xde,0xe0,0xe2,0xe4,0xe6,0xe8,
0xea,0xec,0xed,0xef,0xf0,0xf2,0xf3,0xf5,
0xf6,0xf7,0xf8,0xf9,0xfa,0xfb,0xfc,0xfc,
0xfd,0xfe,0xfe,0xff,0xff,0xff,0xff,0xff,
0xff,0xff,0xff,0xff,0xff,0xff,0xfe,0xfe,
0xfd,0xfc,0xfc,0xfb,0xfa,0xf9,0xf8,0xf7,
0xf6,0xf5,0xf3,0xf2,0xf0,0xef,0xed,0xec,
0xea,0xe8,0xe6,0xe4,0xe2,0xe0,0xde,0xdc,
0xda,0xd8,0xd5,0xd3,0xd1,0xce,0xcc,0xc9,
0xc7,0xc4,0xc1,0xbf,0xbc,0xb9,0xb6,0xb3,
0xb0,0xae,0xab,0xa8,0xa5,0xa2,0x9f,0x9c,
0x98,0x95,0x92,0x8f,0x8c,0x89,0x86,0x83,
0x80,0x7c,0x79,0x76,0x73,0x70,0x6d,0x6a,
0x67,0x63,0x60,0x5d,0x5a,0x57,0x54,0x51,
0x4f,0x4c,0x49,0x46,0x43,0x40,0x3e,0x3b,
0x38,0x36,0x33,0x31,0x2e,0x2c,0x2a,0x27,
0x25,0x23,0x21,0x1f,0x1d,0x1b,0x19,0x17,
0x15,0x13,0x12,0x10,0x0f,0x0d,0x0c,0x0a,
0x09,0x08,0x07,0x06,0x05,0x04,0x03,0x03,
0x02,0x01,0x01,0x00,0x00,0x00,0x00,0x00,
0x00,0x00,0x00,0x00,0x00,0x00,0x01,0x01,
0x02,0x03,0x03,0x04,0x05,0x06,0x07,0x08,
0x09,0x0a,0x0c,0x0d,0x0f,0x10,0x12,0x13,
0x15,0x17,0x19,0x1b,0x1d,0x1f,0x21,0x23,
0x25,0x27,0x2a,0x2c,0x2e,0x31,0x33,0x36,
0x38,0x3b,0x3e,0x40,0x43,0x46,0x49,0x4c,
0x4f,0x51,0x54,0x57,0x5a,0x5d,0x60,0x63,
0x67,0x6a,0x6d,0x70,0x73,0x76,0x79,0x7c
};

// PWM output (OCR1A)
int pwmPin = 9;

// 16 bit accumulator
uint16_t phaseAccumulator = 0;
// 16 bit delta
uint16_t phaseIncrement = 0;
// DDS resolution
const uint32_t resolution =  68719;
// wavetable lookup index(upper 8 bits of the accumulator)
uint8_t index = 0;
// Desired output frequency (let's set it to 440Hz)
uint16_t frequency = 440;

// TIMER1 will overflow at a 62.5KHz(Sampling frequency).
// Updates the OCR1A value and the accumulator.
// Computes the next sample to be sent to the PWM.
ISR(TIMER1_OVF_vect)
{
static uint8_t osc = 0;

// Send oscillator output to PWM
OCR1A = osc;

// Update accumulator
phaseAccumulator += phaseIncrement;
index = phaseAccumulator >> 8;

// Read oscillator value for next interrupt
osc = pgm_read_byte( &sineTable[index] );

}

// Configures TIMER1 to fast PWM non inverted mode.
// Prescaler set to 1, which means that timer overflows
// every 16MHz/256 = 62.5KHz
void initPWM(void)
{
// Set PORTB1 pin as output
pinMode(pwmPin, OUTPUT);

// 8-bit Fast PWM - non inverted PWM
TCCR1A= _BV(COM1A1) | _BV(WGM10);

// Start timer without prescaler
TCCR1B = _BV(CS10) | _BV(WGM12);

// Enable overflow interrupt for OCR1A
TIMSK1 = _BV(TOIE1);

}

// Translates the desired output frequency to a phase
// increment to be used with the phase accumulator.
// The 16 bit shift is required to remove the  2^16
// scale factor of the resolution.
void setFrequency( uint32_t frequency )
{
uint64_t phaseIncr64 =  resolution * frequency;
phaseIncrement = phaseIncr64 >> 16;
}

void setup(void)
{
// Initialise fast PWM
initPWM();

// Enable sleep mode
set_sleep_mode(SLEEP_MODE_IDLE);

// Set phase increment according to
// desired output frequency
setFrequency( frequency );

// Enable global interrupts
sei();
}

void loop()
{
// Go to sleep
sleep_mode();
}

You can also add more lookup tables for different waveforms like triangle, toothsaw, ECG, square, or even some noise. Or use more than  one oscillator and mix them.

For details on the algorithm check  the Wikipedia entry on DDS and Direct  Digital Synthesis: A Tool for Periodic Wave Generation (Part 1) .