Silentium uses Analog Devices Blackfin processors in active noise controller

Analog Devices, Inc. said that Silentium Ltd. has selected Analog Devices’ Blackfin processors to power Silentium’s S-Cube™ controller, which is used in spatial and broadband active noise control (ANC) applications.

Active noise cancellation minimizes the unwelcome “noise” often generated by electronic equipment. Silentium’s Blackfin-based S-Cube Controller technology enables product developers to incorporate active noise control into existing products or provide board-level ANC components to incorporate into custom designs. The controllers can deliver more than 10dB (A) broadband noise reduction covering the entire audible range, and can deliver from 100Hz up to 2KHz point to zone spatial noise reduction.

The 600 MHz Blackfin BF533 processor executes Silentium’s proprietary algorithms to perform system identification, phase and spatial matching, and to adaptively follow the changes in noise spectrum, achieving results of about 10dB (A) noise reduction on top of passive noise reduction obtained by using only traditional acoustic materials.

“Blackfin’s extensive peripheral connectivity allowed us to take a whole-system design approach, giving us both a powerful platform and the design flexibility necessary to develop low-cost, highly effective low to medium frequency solutions for both our end users and OEM customers,” said Yoel Naor, director of products, Silentium.

The fully programmable Blackfin BF533 16/32-bit core is capable of operating at up to 756 MHz/1512 MMACS and has up to 148kB of on-chip SRAM memory. Effective for intensive data processing applications like ANC, the BF533 has two dual-channel, full-duplex, synchronous serial ports and 12 DMA channels supporting one- and two dimensional data transfers.

The Blackfin processor’s self-contained dynamic power management capability, with power consumption starting as low as .8 V to 1.45 V, allows the operating frequency and voltage to be independently manipulated to dynamically meet the performance requirements of algorithm execution, enabling exceptional power optimization. Silentium’s design takes advantage of the Blackfin BF533’s standard integrated peripheral set, including, UART, SPORT, and SPI peripherals.

The ANC solution incorporated additional ADI components, including the AD73311L Codec, a single channel, 3V front end processor for general purpose speech and telephony and the ADM6711 microprocessor reset generator circuit to provide a reset signal on power-up, power-down when supply voltage falls below a preset threshold.