FPGA implementation of logarithm of a number to base 2

The miraculous powers of modern day calculations rests on three important discoveries namely Arabic notation, decimal fractions and logarithm. The concept of logarithm has been used for more than three hundred years and it has simplified lot of calculations but in today's modern systems such as FPGAs which are employed in Software Defined Radios there is a need to efficiently implement logarithm on these programmable devices. But logarithms are implemented either with a look-up table or CORDIC processing system where each has their own drawbacks. In this paper logarithm to the base of any number has been implemented using simple operations such as addition and shift operations with high degree of accuracy. The implementation is done by writing a HDL code for a Artix-7 series FPGA device.