Limit-Cycle Oscillations in Floating-Point Digital Filters

In a digital filter realized with fixed-point arithmetic, there is a peculiar phenomenon known as limit-cycle oscillation, which is due to roundoff errors. For floating-point arithmetic, it has been conjectured that its amplitude is negligibly small, if it does exist. This paper shows that limit-cycle oscillations can exist in floating-point digital filters and that their amplitude can be large. Also, conditions for the existence of limit-cycle oscillations are derived. Copyright © 1973 by The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc.