Design Ideas for Undergrad in DSP

[WolfOfTheSteps]

Hello,

I'm looking to meet an undergrad design requirement, which can be done with independent study. I'll graduate in December, so I have a lot of coursework under my belt. I'll also have all summer to research and prepare. I've focused on communications and dsp, and these are the upper-level courses I've taken:

• Digital Signal Processing
• Digital Filter Design
• Communications Systems
• Digital Communications
• Wireless Communications
• Introduction to Feedback Systems
• Introduction to Digital Control.

I've also taken a required electronics course, so I have some soldering experience as well as bit of experience building transistor circuits, but I'd rather work on a project that is software based. I'm a pretty good programmer and have a lot of MATLAB experience.

I think I'd probably prefer to do a design project focusing on a DSP topic... like maybe something with audio? I'm already doing another independent study in communications, and my school offers more communications courses than DSP, so I want to balance out a little and try something in DSP.

So, does anyone have any ideas for interesting things I might be able to design that are DSP related? (Or even communications related, if you can think of something really cool) I thought about designing some audio filters or something like that (I had the idea of using one person's voice as a reference in order to filter another person's voice and make it sound like the first person.. but I have a feeling this would be extremely difficult. LOL) I just wanted to know what others thought.

Thanks!

 

[waht]

FFT spectrum analyzer might be an interesting project.

 

[deakie]

heres a good one...for audio...

normally we 'hear' over the range 20 to 20kHz when young and as we grow older, the higher frequency responses fall off.
A similar thing occurs with partial deafness...the person only hears a part of the spectrum...
in medicine, a chochlear implant is implanted to relay converted sound to the nerves that is responsible for carrying the signals to the brain...a dsp processor is at the heart of it...

instead of making one for implant or making a hearing aid just to boost volume...
how about making one that will shift/ compress frequencies so that a user could have it adjusted to suit their hearing disability...

eg. older people have problems hearing clearly what young children are saying but if they could have the information compressed down to the range that they can 'hear' in, it would be easier...

how about that?

 

[rbj]

did you just post this to comp.dsp?

if not, you should. if so, were the suggestions there useless?

 

[WolfOfTheSteps]

did you just post this to comp.dsp?

Yes, I did.

if not, you should. if so, were the suggestions there useless?

No, some were actually quite good. Thanks for your suggestion over there, btw. :)

 

[WolfOfTheSteps]

heres a good one...for audio...

normally we 'hear' over the range 20 to 20kHz when young and as we grow older, the higher frequency responses fall off.
A similar thing occurs with partial deafness...the person only hears a part of the spectrum...
in medicine, a chochlear implant is implanted to relay converted sound to the nerves that is responsible for carrying the signals to the brain...a dsp processor is at the heart of it...

instead of making one for implant or making a hearing aid just to boost volume...
how about making one that will shift/ compress frequencies so that a user could have it adjusted to suit their hearing disability...

eg. older people have problems hearing clearly what young children are saying but if they could have the information compressed down to the range that they can 'hear' in, it would be easier...

how about that?

I like this. So, you are suggesting shifting down higher frequency components so older people can hear the high range stuff? I wonder if there are hearing aids that do this? If not, I wonder why not. It should be pretty easy.

Thanks for the suggestion!