Electronic filters are the necessary building block of analog signal processing and

find extensive applications in communication systems. These filters are most often
used in wave filtering applications, that is, where it is required to pass particular
frequency components and to reject others from (continuous-time) signals

Active analog filters can be found in almost every electronic circuit.

Audio systems use filters for frequency-band limiting and
equalization. Designers of communication systems use filters for
tuning specific frequencies and eliminating others. To attenuate high-
frequency signals, every data acquisition system has either an anti-
aliasing (low-pass) filter before the analog-to-digital converter (ADC)
or an anti-imaging (low-pass) filter after the digital-to-analog
converter (DAC).

Introduction –
1
• . In the recent years, there has been a considerable increase in the
construction of active filters as they offer several advantages over
passive filters. Some of the key advantages that can be mentioned are:
(a) Low cost (b) Frequency of gain and frequency adjustment (c) Provides
passband gain (d) No Loading Problem (e) No Insertion Loss

Q&A – Active and passive filters

Passive filters include only passive components—resistors, capacitors,
and inductors. In contrast, active filters use active components, such as op-
amps, in addition to resistors and capacitors, but not inductors.

Passive filters are most responsive to a frequency range from roughly 100
Hz to 300 MHz. The limitation on the lower end is a result of the fact that at
low frequencies the inductance or capacitance would have to be quite
large. The upper-frequency limit is due to the effect of parasitic
capacitances and inductances. Careful design practices can extend the use
of passive circuits well into the gigahertz range.
Active filters are capable of dealing with very low frequencies (approaching
0 Hz), and they can provide voltage gain (passive filters cannot). Active
filters can be used to design high-order filters without the use of inductors;
this is important because inductors are problematic in the context of
integrated-circuit manufacturing techniques. However, active filters are less
suitable for very-high-frequency applications because of amplifier
bandwidth limitations. Radio-frequency circuits must often utilize passive
filters.

Parasitic capacitance - Parasitic capacitance is an unavoidable and usually

unwanted capacitance that exists between the parts of an electronic component or circuit simply
because of their proximity to each other. When two electrical conductors at different voltages are
close together, the electric field between them causes electric charge to be stored on them; this
effect is capacitance.
All practical circuit elements such as inductors, diodes, and transistors have internal capacitance,
which can cause their behavior to depart from that of ideal circuit elements. Additionally, there is
always non-zero capacitance between any two conductors; this can be significant with closely
spaced conductors, such as wires or printed circuit board traces
At low frequencies parasitic capacitance can usually be ignored, but in high frequency circuits it
can be a major problem. In amplifier circuits with extended frequency response, parasitic
capacitance between the output and the input can act as a feedback path, causing the circuit
to oscillate at high frequency. These unwanted oscillations are called parasitic oscillations.
In high frequency amplifiers, parasitic capacitance can combine with stray inductance such as
component leads to form resonant circuits, also leading to parasitic oscillations. In all inductors,
the parasitic capacitance will resonate with the inductance at some high frequency to make the
inductor self-resonant; this is called the self-resonant frequency. Above this frequency, the
inductor actually has capacitive reactance.

2
• Due to this reasons, operational amplifiers(op-amps) have been used as
active building block to realize filter circuits . But it can be seen that op-
amp based circuits suffer from certain drawbacks in their performance
arising from the limited bandwidth and slew rate. But current mode circuits
offer several advantages such as higher bandwidth, very less attenuation,
faster transient response, low power consumption etc.

Q&A – Slew rate

the maximum rate at which an amplifier can respond to an abrupt change of input level.
Formula = 2πfV volts/second or amperes/second

Q&A – current mode over voltage mode or opamps

All conventional analog circuits are voltage mode circuits (VMCs) where the circuit performance is
determined in terms of voltage level at various nodes including the input and the output nodes. But
these circuits suffer from the several disadvantages: (i)Output voltage cannot change instantly when
there is a sudden change in the input voltage due to stray and other circuit capacitances (ii)
Bandwidth of op amp based circuits is usually low because of finite unity-gain bandwidth (iii) Slew
rate is dependent on the time constants associated with the circuit (iv) Circuits do not have high
voltage swings (v) Require higher supply voltages for better SNR. Clearly, VMCs are not suitable for
use in high frequency applications. This unsuitability is due to the fact that in voltage-mode circuits,
the high-valued resistors with parasitic capacitances create a dominant pole at a relative low
frequency, which limits the bandwidth. CM circuits offer a better alternative to VMC in high-
frequency applications.

Following are the advantages of the CM approach: (i)Improved AC performance with better linearity.
(ii) Wide and nearly constant bandwidth independent of closed loop gain. (iii) Relatively high slew
rate. (iv) Easy addition, subtraction and multiplication of signals (v) Higher dynamic range (vi)
Suitability of operation in reduced power supply environment, (vii) Simpler circuit structure (viii)Low-
power consumption

3
For the applications having power consumption as an important design constraint, single active
element based filters are the useful choice.

Therefore, in last few decades the Current Differencing Buffered Amplifier

(CDBA) has emerged as a promising choice for analog filter design. It is
characterized by low input impedance terminals which render it free from
parasitic capacitances, thereby making it a suitable choice for high frequency
operations. Additionally, the CDBA provides both voltage and current outputs
which further enhances the design flexibility.

Q&A – Q factor
The Q or quality factor is a dimensionless number and it describes the damping in
the circuit. ... The Q or quality factor is used with many RF tuned circuits or elements to
indicate their performance in an oscillator or other form of resonant circuit. Simple formulas
relate the losses and bandwidth to the Q.s

4
Many filter design using CDBA are already proposed that can be classified as single
input and single output (SISO), (SIMO) & (MISO). But there are some disadvantages
which we n have to trade off such as - in some of them only single filter response is
provided in some of them Independent adjustment of angular frequency and Q
factor in a circuit is not possible and in some of them passive component count is large

5
In these trade offs keeping Large component spread while keeping the count of passive elements
minimum is also required for obtaining high Q value.

2nd slide
Therefore, in last few decades the Current Differencing Buffered Amplifier
(CDBA) has emerged as a promising choice for analog filter design. It is
characterized by low input impedance terminals which render it free from
parasitic capacitances, thereby making it a suitable choice for high frequency
operations. Additionally, the CDBA provides both voltage and current outputs
which further enhances the design flexibility.

3rd & 4th slide

read

so basically what happens is current difference at the inputs is converted into the output voltage,
Vw through the two terminal element connected to the terminal z. Therefore, CDBA can also
be considered as a transimpedance amplifier, Hence, for the CDBA-based amplifiers, the
limitations due to constant gain-bandwidth product will not occur, which results in good high-
frequency performance. These features make CDBA free from the parasitics and extends the
operation frequency range of this component.

The CMOS implementation of CDBA shown here is composed of a differential current controlled
current source (DCCCS) followed by a voltage buffer

5th slide Proposed Circuit

Now using the port relationship or elemantry equations of CDba blocks we get the tf of proposed
circuit as
𝑉0 𝑌1 𝑌2 𝑌3
=
𝑉𝑖𝑛 𝑌 (𝑌 𝑌 + 𝑌 𝑌 + 𝑌 𝑌 + 𝑌 𝑌 + 𝑌 𝑌 + 𝑌 𝑌 + 𝑌 𝑌 + 𝑌 𝑌 − 𝑌3 𝑌 𝑌 )
6 1 2 1 3 1 4 2 3 2 4 2 5 3 5 4 5 𝑌6 2 5
But for ease of calculation and further mathematical operations lets assume as K = Y3/Y6

And
𝐷 = 𝑌1 𝑌2 + 𝑌1 𝑌3 + 𝑌1 𝑌4 + 𝑌2 𝑌3 + 𝑌2 𝑌4 + 𝑌2 𝑌5 + 𝑌3 𝑌5 + 𝑌4 𝑌5 − 𝐾𝑌2 𝑌5

Thus we can write the tf as

𝑉0 𝐾𝑌1 𝑌2
=
𝑉𝑖𝑛 𝐷

Q&A – R,G,Y
Resistance (R) X Conductance (G)

Reactance (X) X Susceptance(B)

Impedance(Z) X Admittance (Y)

6th slide
Read

7th slide
After that the table at the bottom lists the filter parameters for all the three
responses when all the conductance are set equal to G except G6 and all capacitors
are set equal to C. It may be observed from the following table that ω0 can be set
using appropriate G and C values and the desired Q0 can be obtained with the
help of G6, that is the K determining component, thus we are able to adjust angular
frequency and Q factor Independentally thereby making tuning independent.

Q&A – what is resonant frequency

It is the frequency at which the magnitude of the frequency response has peak value for
the first time. It is denoted by ωr

Q&A – Q factor
The Q or quality factor is a dimensionless number . The quality factor or 'Q' of an inductor or
tuned circuit is often used to give an indication of its performance in a resonator circuit. The Q or
quality factor is a dimensionless number and it describes the damping in the circuit. It also
provides an indication of the resonator’s bandwidth relative to its centre frequency.

Q&A – damping and Q factor

One aspect of the Q factor that is of importance in many circuits is the damping. The Quality Factor,
Q determines the qualitative behaviour of simple damped oscillators and affects other circuits such
as the response within filters, etc.

There are three main regimes which can be considered when referring to the damping and Q
factor.

• Under-damped (Q > 1/2) : An under-damped system is one where the Q factor is

greater than a half. Those systems where the Q factor is only just over a half may oscillate
once or twice when a step impulse is applied before the oscillation falls away. As the quality
factor increases, so the damping falls and oscillations will be sustained for longer.
• Over-damped (Q < 1/2): An over-damped system has a Q factor that is less than 1/2. In
this type of system, the losses are high and the system has no overshoot. Instead the
system will exponential decay, approaching the steady state value asymptotically after a
step impulse is applied. As the Q factor or quality factor is reduced, so the systems
responds more slowly to a step impulse.
• Critically damped (Q = 1/2) : The critically damped system has a Q factor of 0.5 and
like an over-damped system, the output does not oscillate, and does not overshoot its
steady-state output. The system will approach the steady-state asymptote in the fastest
time without any overshoot.
Q&A – DC gain
The DC gain, is the ratio of the magnitude of the steady-state step response to the magnitude of the step input.

8th slide Sensitivity analysis

It maybe observed that the filter configurations are insensitive to parameter
variations as passive sensitivities for all the responses are less than 0.5 in
magnitude. This means there are no significant change in output due to changing
value of a particular component.
As 𝑆ω𝐶40 = 𝑆ω𝐶50 = − 2 this means if we increase c4 or c5 by a factor of four, the resonant
1

angular frequency will decreases by 4^(-1/2) ie is 2

so the resonant angular frequency will decreases by factor of two
Similarly the passive sensitivities of ω0 and Q0 for the HP and BP filter configuration
can be also be computed
Q&A – Sensitivity
It gives variations in output due to change in system parameters simply we can say that circuit
sensitivity is how much a particular circuit characteristic changes as a particular
component value varies.

9th slide Non ideality analysis

In CMOS implementation of CDBA current and voltage tracking errors may exist due
device mismatch. Taking these errors into consideration the terminal relationships of
the CDBA get modified as –
𝐼𝑧 = 𝛼𝑝 𝐼 − 𝛼𝑛 𝐼𝑛
𝑝

𝑉𝑤 = 𝛽𝑉𝑧
Where, 𝛼𝑝 = (1 − 𝜀𝑝 ), 𝛼𝑛 = (1 − 𝜀𝑛 ) and 𝛽 = (1 − 𝜀𝑟 )
The termsεp(|εp|<<1) andεn(|εn|<<1) denote the current-tracking errors from p
and n terminals to z terminal respectively and εv (|εv|<<1) is the voltage-tracking
error from z to w terminal of the CDBA. The modified transfer functions of the
proposed filter in the presence of current and voltage tracking errors can be
expressed as shown in the table.
It is clearly observable even due to device mismatch or small current tracking errors
the angular frequency for the proposed filters remain unchanged.

10th slide simulation & result

The proposed multifunctional filter is verified through simulations using the
CMOS implementation of the CDBA . The SPICE simulations are performed
using 0.18μm CMOS process. Supply voltages taken are ±0.9 V. The LP, HP
and BP filter configurations are designed with Q=1 and f0 of 500 KHz. For all
three filter responses the value of resistances are taken as 10kΩ except for R6
having a value is 22.68kΩ for LP and 35.86kΩ for HP and BP. The values of
capacitances for LP are chosen 0.055nF and for HP and BP the values of
capacitances are 0.045nF. The simulated f0 is observed to be 493KHz in case of
LP whereas in HP and BP it is found to be 484 KHz. The simulated values are
in close agreement to the theoretical frequency of 500 KHz.
11th slide
Here the center frequency is 493 khz , with a phase total phase shift of –180° ie ( 0 to -180)
since it is of 2nd order. The center frequency is somewhere close to the theoretical frequency
of 500 khz

each 2-pole section provides a maximum 180° of phase shift; and at the extremities, a phase
shift of –180°

12th slide
Here the center frequency is 484 khz , with a phase total phase shift of –180°ie (180 to 0 )
since it is od 2nd order. The center frequency is somewhere close to the theoretical
frequency of 500 khz

13th slide
Here also the center frequency is 484 khz , with a phase total phase shift of –180°(90 to -90
) The center frequency is somewhere close to the theoretical frequency of 500 khz

14th slide
A new voltage mode single CDBA based filter topology is presented in this paper.
The configuration can be used to synthesize LP, HP and BP filters with appropriate
choices of admittance. The proposed configuration can be extended to obtain the
current mode, transadmittance mode and transimpedance mode through appropriate
input signal and component selection. The proposed configuration is a suitable
choice for high quality factor implementation. Passive sensitivities for the
configuration are found low. Extensive SPICE simulations are carried out to observe
the performance of the proposed configuration. The simulation and theoretical
results are found in close agreement.
Ref No of Type Standard filter Mode R+C Independen
CDBA Function t
ωo and Q0
[3] 2 SIMO LP, BP, HP CM 4+2 YES
[4] 1 SISO BP VM 2+2,3+ YES
3
3+3,2+
2
[5] 2 SIMO LP, BP, HP CM 4+2 YES
[8] 1 SISO LP, BP, HP LP BP HP NO
C 3+2 2+3 2+3
M 3+2 2+3 2+3
VM 2+2 2+2 NA
TI 3+2 3+2 3+2
M
TAM
[9] 1 MISO LP, BP, HP, VM 4+2 YES
AP,
 [10] 3 SIMO LP, BP, BS VM 7+2 YES
3 HP, BP, AP VM 2+7
[12] 1 SIMO LP, BP CM 3+2 YES
2 SIS H C 3+2 YE
2 O P M 3+3 S
SIS H C YE
O P M S
[13] 1 SISO AP VM 3+2 NO
[14] 3 SIMO LP, BP, BS VM 4+2 YES
3 SIMO HP, BP, AP VM 2+4 YES
[15] 3 MISO LP, BP, HP, CM 2+2 YES
BS,
[16] 1 MISO LP, BP, HP, VM 4+4 YES
BS,
[17] 2 SISO LP, BP, HP, CM 4+4 YES
BS,
Proposed 1 SISO LP, BP, HP VM 4+2 YES
work