System level dsp synthesis using voltage overscaling, unequal error protection and adaptive quality tuning,” SIPS

In this paper, we propose a system level design approach considering voltage over-scaling (VaS) that achieves error resiliency using unequal error protection of different computation elements, while incurring minor quality degradation. Depending on user specifications and severity of process variations/channel noise, the degree of vas in each block of the system is adaptively tuned to ensure minimum system power while providing "just-the-right " amount of quality and robustness. This is achieved, by taking into consideration system level interactions and ensuring that under any change of operating conditions only the "less-crucial " computations, that contribute less to block/system output quality, are affected. The design methodology applied to a DCT/IDCT system shows large power benefits (up to 69%) at reasonable image quality while tolerating errors induced by varying operating conditions (VaS, process variations, channel noise). Interestingly, the proposed IDCT scheme conceals channel noise at scaled voltages. Index Terms- Low power, error resilient, supply voltage scaling 1