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A Hardware/Software Co-Design of MP3 Audio Decoder

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Abstract

The Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) audio coding standard offers three levels of compression algorithms where the MPEG Layer III (MP3) has the best quality but with the most complexity. There are several complex coding techniques involved in MP3 audio decoding algorithm, therefore, it is difficult to make an efficient architecture design. This paper presents a hardware/software co-design method for the implementation of MP3 audio decoder, which meets the real-time requirement of MP3 standard. The software and hardware part of this decoder is partitioned into a pre-processing and a post-processing unit respectively. The pre-processing unit with a programmable parser processor is developed for the implementation of intensive decision making operations needed for audio bitstreams. The post-processing unit with a dedicated hardware of modified fast algorithm is designed for the regular and computation-intensive operations in MP3 audio decoding flow. The architecture achieves a high throughput with a reduced memory requirement and hardware complexity. With a two-level pipeline approach, it allows a high hardware utilization and is suitable to low power implementation. The proposed decoder system has been designed and implemented using VLSI cell-based approach. The die size is 3.5 × 4.45 mm2 with the maximum operation frequency of 20 MHz.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Electronic Engineering, National Central University, Chung-Li, Taiwan

    Tsung-Han Tsai, Ya-Chau Yang & Chun-Nan Liu

Authors
  1. Tsung-Han Tsai
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  2. Ya-Chau Yang
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  3. Chun-Nan Liu
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Tsung-Han Tsai.

Additional information

Tsung-Han Tsai was born in Chunghua, Taiwan, R.O.C. He received the B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan, in 1990, 1994, and 1998 respectively. Dr. Tsai was an Instructor (1994–1998) and an Associate Professor (1998–1999) of the department of electrical engineering at Hwa Hsia College of Technology and Commerce. From 1999 to 2000, he was an Associate Professor of electronic engineering at Fu Jen University. Currently, he is an Assistant Professor in the department of electrical engineering at National Central University. He is also a member of IEEE and Audio Engineering Society (AES). Dr. Tsai has been awarded 8 patents and more than 70 refereed papers published in international journals and conferences. His research interests include VLSI signal processing, video/audio coding algorithms, DSP architecture design, wireless communication and System-On-Chip design.

Ya-Chau Yang was born in Tainan, ROC in 1976. He received the B.S. and M.S. degrees both in electrical engineering from Fu-Jen University in 1999 and 2001, respectively. In 2002, he was as software engineer of Foundry Access in Cadence Design Systems. Currently he is a design engineer at ActVision Technology Inc, where he works on MPEG audio decoder IP design. His interests include MPEG audio coding algorithms, VLSI signal processing/architecture and computer architecture.

Chun-Nan Liu was born in Taichung, Taiwan, R.O.C., in 1978. He received the B.S. degrees in electrical engineering from National Central University, Taiwan, in 2000. He is currently pursuing the Ph.D. degree from the Department of Electrical Engineering, National Central University, Taiwan. His area of interests are audio signal processing and VLSI signal processing.

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Tsai, TH., Yang, YC. & Liu, CN. A Hardware/Software Co-Design of MP3 Audio Decoder. J VLSI Sign Process Syst Sign Image Video Technol 41, 111–127 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11265-005-6254-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11265-005-6254-2

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