Strategies in a cost-effective implementation of the PDC half-rate codec for wireless communications

An application specific 16-bit fixed-point DSP (AK 2377) has been developed which executes the PDC (Personal Digital Cellular) half-rate speech codec system, an 80 MOPS task, at only 20 MHz operation with a low-power consumption of 100 mW. This was achieved through an architecture which hosts a customized parallel data path with a low memory bandwidth, customized I/O, a VLIW-like instruction set, and software innovations to minimize the complexity requirements.