CORDIC Architectures: A Survey

In the last decade, CORDIC algorithm has drawn wide attention from academia and industry for various applications such as DSP, biomedical signal processing, software defined radio, neural networks, and MIMO systems to mention just a few. It is an iterative algorithm, requiring simple shift and addition operations, for hardware realization of basic elementary functions. Since CORDIC is used as a building block in various single chip solutions, the critical aspects to be considered are high speed, low power, and low area, for achieving reasonable overall performance. In this paper, we first classify the CORDIC algorithm based on the number system and discuss its importance in the implementation of CORDIC algorithm. Then, we present systematic and comprehensive taxonomy of rotational CORDIC algorithms, which are subsequently discussed in depth. Special attention has been devoted to the higher radix and flat techniques proposed in the literature for reducing the latency. Finally, detailed comparison of various algorithms is presented, which can provide a first-order information to designers looking for either further improvement of performance or selection of rotational CORDIC for a specific application.