Block floating point representation

Question

Explain what block floating point representation is and state its advantages? Specify the benefits of the floating point arithmetic?

Answer 1

Within the block point arithmetic, the set of signals is divided into blocks. Every block has same value for the exponent. The arithmetic operations in the block use the fixed point arithmetic and only one exponent per block gets stored, therefore saving the memory. This representation of the numbers is more appropriate in particular FFT flow graph and in the digital audio applications.

Benefits of floating point arithmetic include:

a) Large dynamic range.

b) Over flow in the floating point representation is unlike.