SCIENCE

NATICK, MA -- The MathWorks, Inc., a leading supplier of DSP design and simulation software, today announced the availability of a new version of its Filter Design Toolbox. The Toolbox provides advanced filter design methods for designing and analyzing digital filters with stringent specifications and is built on MATLAB(R), which is recognized worldwide as the leading software for algorithm development. The Filter Design Toolbox is now linked with The MathWorks DSP and communications system-level design and implementation tools. Through a new graphical user interface, users can now directly design and simulate advanced floating-point filters in Simulink. With the new release, customers can also export filters from the Filter Design Toolbox into Code Composer Studio. Code Composer Studio is Texas Instruments' integrated development environment for taking DSP designs and implementing them on TI DSPs. Toracomm, a design and engineering consultancy that provides service to the wireless and mobile communications industries, selected the Filter Design Toolbox to provide a fixed-point simulation and design capability for algorithms to be implemented on DSP and FPGA targets. "After testing numerous competing products, we found the Filter Design Toolbox provided the best range of fixed-point arithmetic parameters, filter architectures and operational statistics," said Richard Hewitt, senior DSP and software consultant at Toracomm. "Along with these features, the Filter Design Toolbox allows our engineers to stay within the MATLAB environment for all algorithmic simulation work, thus enhancing the value of our in-house expertise and minimizing the third-party software inventory." With this new release, the Filter Design Toolbox has added a number of new filter design techniques which let engineers easily design and evaluate advanced filters for applications such as communications, including wireless communications, as well as speech and audio, multimedia, medical and military. "The adoption of the Filter Design Toolbox has been very strong since its initial release in late 1999. Today, with expanded functionality and links to other MathWorks DSP design products, such as the Developer's Kit for Texas Instruments DSP, the Toolbox has become an indispensable tool for engineers who design and verify the implementation of digital filters in real-time systems," said Anne Mascarin, DSP Segment Manager at The MathWorks." The MathWorks system-level design and simulation products are based on MATLAB, Simulink, and over 15 other products used to design DSP, analog/mixed-signal and control logic components of communications, multimedia and embedded electronics products. Together, these products offer engineers one integrated environment that takes a design from concept to code. The Filter Design Toolbox which received the EDN Innovation of the Year award for software products at the spring Embedded Systems Conference, requires the use of MATLAB and the Signal Processing Toolbox and is available on Windows, UNIX and Linux operating systems. North American commercial pricing for this toolbox starts at US $1,000 for a single-user PC license. For further information visit www.mathworks.com