Low-cost microcontroller-based hardware for introducing digital filter fundamentals to students

Digital filters are currently created using high-performance DSP chips. Although these chips have many advantages in commercial and industrial applications, they usually oversimplify and hide away the basic concepts for the realization of digital signal processing techniques. This paper describes the design of a digital filter using a low-cost microcontroller as the processing element. The main feature of the system is that it aims to teach students the basic hardware and software implementation of digital filters. Both FIR and IIR type filters can easily be implemented with the system; the developed platform will be used at the Near East University together with DSP chips to teach the practical realization of digital filters to undergraduate students.