tomscii
commented
10 years ago from rfd900:
Stack starts at: 0x7d (sp set to 0x7c) with 131 bytes available.
Other memory:
Name Start End Size Max
PAGED EXT. RAM 0x0000 0x00ec 237 256
EXTERNAL RAM 0x00ed 0x0ffd 3857 4096
ROM/EPROM/FLASH 0x0000 0xa995 42392 62464
tridge
The Golay23 codec in SiK/radio could use some optimisations. An improved version is proposed in this commit. Changes to the upstream version, with observations motivating those changes, are outlined below.
a) Code table width
The tables used for encoding and decoding are 32 bits wide, which is a complete waste of ROM space. We are only interested in recovering the 12-bit payload data -- we don't really care about whether errors that fall into the parity symbol part of the codeword get corrected or not. We throw that part away anyway.
So only 11 bits of the encoder table are significant to us -- 11 bits is the width of the syndrome that, combined with our 12-bit payload, will form the 23 bits of the Golay23 codeword. For easy storage, we store these values in a 16 bit wide table. The table still contains 4096 values, but requires half the storage space.
Naturally, the decoder table also can be restricted to the meaningful part. In this case, the table contains the error correction lookup values of which 12 bits are useful -- the width of our payload we wish to correct. For easy storage, we store these also in a 16 bit wide table. The table still contains 2048 values, but requires half the storage space.
b) Decoding algorithm
That was trivial, you might say. Now comes the interesting part. The decoding of Golay23 codewords can be done in much less work compared to the existing implementation. Specifically, the whole syndrome calculation function is redundant. Why calculate the syndrome on the spot each time, when it is already stored in a table?
Realise that the encoder table is nothing but precomputed values of the syndrome for all possible payload values. The encoding operation is in fact nothing more but a lookup to obtain the syndrome value corresponding to the payload at hand, and appending it to obtain the encoded codeword. The exact same operation is usable to obtain the syndrome when decoding. The difference, of course, is that the received payload (the part of the received codeword that is the payload) may contain some bit errors. Nevertheless, we look it up in the encoder table to obtain the syndrome corresponding to that payload, were it the real payload that was sent (and if there is no error, it is).
Since the operations over the code space are linear, XORing this looked-up syndrome with the received parity will yield the real received syndrome. The same as the expensive syndrome calculator function would have yielded. That is, we traded a function call with a loop over individual bits for a cheap table lookup and an XOR.
NOTES
My earlier version of this patch shaved off a few more cycles by re-arranging the bytes within the 3-packs (payload) / 6-packs (encoded data). This version takes care to keep the pre-existing over-the-air data format so a radio flashed with a firmware carrying this patch will still be able to communicate with another endpoint that does not contain this patch. However, the overwhelming majority of the performance gain, as well as all the storage gain is still there.
I don't have access to the real hardware so I cannot measure the real-time improvement these changes yield. I estimate the time required to run golay_decode24() to be about one third of the original.
I did verify the codec implementation driving it via a host program (compiled with GCC on Linux) acting as a testbench: generating random payload, encoding, applying errors, decoding and verifying that the original payload was recovered. In case of interest, I shall be happy to supply this testbench application. The application now also verifies that the encoder emits the very same encoded 6-packs for all possible 3-byte inputs that the original version does.