Prototyping for a DDS-based I/Q referen...

Carrier frequency principles with synchronous demodulation offer several advantages for use in capacitive sensors,in particular with respect to suppression of external disturbers,coexistence of sensors, and capability to determine frequencydependent changes of the capacitance/impedance. A key component in such systems is the generation of the excitation signal(s)as well as the reference signals for demodulation.This work focuses on the early functional evaluation of directdigital synthesis for such signals using a virtual prototype inSystemC AMS (IEEE 1666.1), a high-level synthesis approachbased on C (ISO 9899) as well as a classic hand-written VHDLcode (IEEE 1076) for a rapid prototyping setup. The methodsare compared with respect to efforts and results showing theadvantages and disadvantages in a qualitative fashion. The lowerefforts and lower risk of errors in the code provided by high levelmeta modeling allows to speed up the development cycle andrequired application dependent adaptations of signal generationin carrier frequency based capacitive sensor front-ends.