Fast Gaussian noise generator

Author

Chu, Peter L.

Author_Institution

MIT Lincoln Lab., Lexington, MA, USA

Volume

37

Issue

10

fYear

1989

fDate

10/1/1989 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

1593

Lastpage

1597

Abstract

Algorithm description, block diagram, and complete C source code for a fast Gaussian noise generator which uses only integer operations and table lookups are presented. The algorithm achieves its speed of computation by using table lookups to eliminate the need for evaluating transcendental functions. The lookup table requires only 32768 bytes of memory-a small size, even for a personal computer. By using a larger lookup table, the quantization step size can be decreased and the range of coverage increased. Implementation on a Motorola 68020 processor, the generator produced a million Gaussian numbers in 12 s, which is ten times faster than a floating-point random number generator executed with a Motorola 68020-68881 combination

Keywords

C listings; random number generation; table lookup; 32768 bytes; Gaussian numbers; Motorola 68020 processor; algorithm; block diagram; complete C source code; fast Gaussian noise generator; integer operations; personal computer; quantization step size; table lookups; Computer simulation; Gaussian noise; H infinity control; Noise generators; Quantization; Random number generation; Random variables; Signal processing; Signal processing algorithms; Table lookup;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing, IEEE Transactions on

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0096-3518

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/29.35399

Filename

35399