XOR-decomposition principle and its use to build a glitch-free maximum-speed arbitrary binary waveform generator and deglitcher

Arbitrary binary waveforms are needed for chip testing and for operating complexly-controlled devices. Such signals are required to be glitch-free and might have to be as fast as the fastest clock available, thus with transitions coinciding with both positive and negative clock edges, which prevents the use of conventional (by means of D-type flip-flops) deglitching of the generated signals. This paper introduces the XOR-decomposition principle, which allows any binary waveform to be decomposed into two other waveforms, each with half the frequency of the original (decomposed) signal, hence with transitions at only one of the clock edges, which then makes the use of conventional deglitching possible. This principle is used to build an inexpensive, glitch-free, maximum-speed, arbitrary binary waveform generator. It is also extended subsequently to build an inexpensive deglitcher for any max-speed binary waveform. Both solutions are standard (application-independent), with proper time predictability, suited for both VLSI- and FPGA-based implementations. Experimental results from FPGA implementations using VHDL are also reported.