Active filters

Chapter 19

• A filter passes one band of frequencies while rejecting another.

• A filter can be either passive or active. Passive filters are built with resistors,
capacitors, and inductors. They are generally used above 1 MHz, have no power
gain, and are relatively difficult to tune.
• Active filters are built with resistors, capacitors, and op amps. They are useful
below 1 MHz, have power gain, and are relatively easy to tune.

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Ideal Responses
• The frequency response of a filter is the graph of its voltage gain versus frequency.
• Low-pass and high-pass filter
• A low-pass filter passes all frequencies from zero to the cutoff frequency and blocks all frequencies above the cutoff
frequency.
• The frequencies between zero and the cutoff frequency are called the passband. The frequencies above the cutoff
frequency are called the stopband. The roll-off region between the passband and the stopband is called the
transition.
• A high-pass filter blocks all frequencies from zero up to the cutoff frequency and passes all frequencies above the
cutoff frequency.

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• Band-pass filter
• The passband is all the frequencies between the lower and upper cutoff frequencies.
• The frequencies below the lower cutoff frequency and above the upper cutoff frequency are the
stopband.
• An ideal bandpass filter has zero attenuation in the passband, infinite attenuation in the stopband, and
two vertical transitions.
• The bandwidth (BW) of a bandpass filter is the difference between its upper and lower 3-dB cutoff
frequencies:

• The center frequency is symbolized by f0 and is given by Band-stop filter

the geometric average of the two cutoff frequencies:

• The Q of a bandpass filter is defined as the center

frequency divided by the bandwidth:

• If Q is less than 1, the bandpass filter is called a wideband filter. If Q is greater than 1, the filter is called
a narrowband filter.
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Passband and Stopband Attenuation
• Zero attenuation in the passband, infinite attenuation in the stopband, and a vertical
transition are unrealistic.
• To build a practical low-pass filter, the three regions are approximated as shown in Fig. 19-
6.
• The passband is the set of frequencies between 0 and fc.
• The stopband is all the frequencies above fs.
• The transition region is between fc and fs.
• The passband attenuation between 0 and Ap

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Filter response
• Butterworth approximation
• the maximally flat approximation
• the response rolls off at a rate of approximately 20n dB per decade, where n is the order of the filter:

• the response of a Butterworth low-pass

filter with the following specifications:
n = 6, Ap = 2.5 dB, and fc = 1 kHz.

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• Chebyshev approximation
• Rolls off faster in the transition region than a Butterworth filter
• Ripples appear in the passband
• The number of ripples in the passband of a Chebyshev low-pass filter equals half of the filter order:

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• Bessel approximation
• Flat passband and a monotonic stopband similar to those of the Butterworth approximation.
• The roll-off in the transition region is much less with a Bessel filter than with a Butterworth filter.
• Optimized to produce a linear phase shift with frequency

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8
Passive Filters
• Low-pass LC filter. It has an order of 2 because it contains two reactive components, an
inductor and a capacitor. A second-order LC filter has a resonant frequency and a Q
defined as follows:
Damping factor
• damping means “reducing” or “diminishing.” The higher the damping factor,
the smaller the peak.
First-Order Stages
• First-order or 1-pole active-filter stages have only one capacitor. Because of
this, they can produce only a low-pass or a high-pass response.
• Low-Pass Stage
High-Pass Stage
Digital Filter
• Fast Fourier Transform (FFT)
Example

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 Compute the two-sided spectrum P2.
Then compute the single-sided spectrum P1
based on P2 and the even-valued signal length L.

Define the frequency domain f and plot the single-sided amplitude

spectrum P1. The amplitudes are not exactly at 0.7 and 1, as expected,
because of the added noise. On average, longer signals produce better
frequency approximations.

Now, take the Fourier transform of the

original, uncorrupted signal and retrieve
the exact amplitudes, 0.7 and 1.0.

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Example: cosine wave

• Create a matrix where each row represents a cosine wave with scaled frequency.

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Mean filtering is easy to implement. It is used as a
method of smoothing images, reducing the amount
of intensity variation between one pixel and the
next resulting in reducing noise in images.

The idea of mean filtering is simply to replace each

pixel value in an image with the mean (`average')
value of its neighbors, including itself. This has the
effect of eliminating pixel values which are
unrepresentative of their surroundings.

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Median Filtering
• Median filtering is a nonlinear method used to remove noise from images.
• It is particularly effective at removing ‘salt and pepper’ type noise.
• The median filter works by moving through the image pixel by pixel, replacing each value with the
median value of neighbouring pixels.
• The pattern of neighbours is called the "window", which slides, pixel by pixel over the entire image.
• The median is calculated by first sorting all the pixel values from the window into numerical order,
and then replacing the pixel being considered with the middle (median) pixel value.

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