Direct digital synthesis: a tool for periodic wave generation (part 2)

Direct digital synthesis (DDS) is a useful tool for generating periodic waveforms. In this two-part article, the basic idea of this synthesis technique is presented and then focused on the quality of the sinewave a DDS can create, introducing the SFDR quality parameter. Next effective methods to increase the SFDR are presented through sinewave approximations, hardware schemes such as dithering and noise shaping, and an extensive list of reference. When the desired output is a digital signal, the signal's characteristics can be accurately predicted using the formulas given in this article. When the desired output is an analog signal, the reader should keep in mind that the performance of the DDS is eventually limited by the performance of the digital-to-analog converter and the follow-on analog filter. Hoping that this article would incite engineers to use DDS either in integrated circuits DDS or software-implemented DDS. From the author's experience, this technique has proven valuable when frequency resolution is the challenge, particularly when using low-cost microcontrollers.