The ‘PlugInChain’ is a modular signal processing framework for research and development in MATLAB. (Version 2007 or higher is recommended). It offers the functionality to build and configure processing chains of individual signal processing modules (plugins) that may contain fundamental or advanced signal processing, e.g., linear filtering.
A chain of individual plugins is defined by a simple text file, a ‘pluginlist’, and can be edited and executed via a graphical user interface (GUI) Alternatively, the PlugInChain can be used without GUI in scripts or in the MATLAB command window. The user can refer to existing signal processing functionality in the form of plugins and pluginlists and can built more complex signal processing chains without knowing all the implementational details and without necessarily programming new plugins himself.
The PlugInChain offers frame based signal processing with arbitrary frame size and provides a well defined interface between the plugins. The structure of the plugins is easily accessible and extendable. Plugins can have configuration parameters that can be controlled via the pluginlist. In this way, it is possible to initialize a plugin with different settings without changing its source code.
Users are permitted to create custom plugins and plugin lists or derive them from included examples and to distribute their own creations in any form under any license independent of the PlugInChain. The plugin and pluginlist structure and the included examples are therefore licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported (CC BY 3.0) while the remaining PlugInChain is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
A documentation file (pdf) is included in the download packages as well as a short installation note.
This work was supported by the Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung (BMBF) “Modellbasierte Hörsysteme”.