A unified approach to implementation of stack filters

New stack filter architectures are proposed. Known architectures are considered from new positions and combined to obtain new structures with suitable complexities and throughputs. It is shown that all stack filters can be used without changes when the input data is represented in one of the binary lexicographic codes. Stack filters are also proposed for the cases where the data are represented in multiple-value lexicographic codes. The class of pipeline-parallel structures for common stack filters is simple and modular in structure, and suitable for VLSI implementation. The time-area complexity of the proposed filters is O(k), where k is the number of bits in the input signals.<>