A Versatile Linear Insertion Sorter Based on a FIFO Scheme

A linear sorter based on first in first out (FIFO) scheme is presented. It is capable of discarding the oldest value, inserting the incoming data while keeping the values sorted in a single clock cycle. This type of sorter can be used as coprocessor or as module in specialized architectures for order statistics filtering. The architecture is composed of identical processing elements thus can be easily adapted to any length according to specific application needs. The use of compact identical processing elements results in a high performance yet small architecture. Results of implementing the architecture on a field programmable gate array (FPGA) are presented and compared against other reported hardware based sorters.