ACTIVE FILTERS
Dr. Joseph Al Assad
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WHY DO WE NEED FILTERS?
Natural Voice Telephone System
Natural human voice spans a frequency range from 20Hz to 20KHz,
however conventional telephone system passes frequencies from 400Hz to
3.5KHz. Therefore phone conversation differs from face-to-face
conversation.
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EXAMPLE: VIDEO SIGNAL
➢ Video signals without sufficient bandwidth become fuzzy as they fail to
abruptly change the contrast of pictures from complete white into
complete black.
High Bandwidth Low Bandwidth
WHAT IS A FILTER?
➢ It is sometimes desirable to have circuits capable of selectively
filtering one frequency or range of frequencies out of a mix of
different frequencies in a circuit.
➢ A circuit designed to perform this frequency selection is called a
filter circuit, or simply a filter.
➢ In circuit theory, a filter is an electrical network that alters the
amplitude and/or phase characteristics of a signal with respect
to frequency.
➢ Ideally, a filter will not add new frequencies to the input signal,
nor will it change the component frequencies of that signal, but
it will change the relative amplitudes of the various frequency
components and/or their phase relationships.
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WHAT IS A FILTER?
➢ Note that in the case of this simple example, we are not concerned with
the gain of the filter at any frequency other than f1 and f2.
➢ As long as f2 is sufficiently attenuated relative to f1, the performance of
this filter will be satisfactory.
➢ In general, however, a filter's gain may be specified at several different
frequencies, or over a band of frequencies.
➢ Since filters are defined by their frequency-domain effects on signals, it
makes sense that the most useful analytical and graphical descriptions of
filters also fall into the frequency domain.
➢ Thus, curves of gain vs frequency and phase vs frequency are commonly
used to illustrate filter characteristics, and the most widely-used
mathematical tools are based in the frequency domain.
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WHAT IS A FILTER?
➢ Filters are often used in electronic systems to emphasize signals in certain
frequency ranges and reject signals in other frequency ranges.
➢ Such a filter has a gain which is dependent on signal frequency. As an
example, consider a situation where a useful signal at frequency f1 has been
contaminated with an unwanted signal at f2. If the contaminated signal is
passed through a circuit (Figure 1) that has very low gain at f2 compared to
f1, the undesired signal can be removed, and the useful signal will remain.
IDEAL FILTER TYPES
Four types of filters - “Ideal”
lowpass highpass
bandpass bandstop
IDEAL VS PRACTICAL FILTERS
H(f) H(f)
0 f 0 f
fc fc
Ideal “brick wall” filter Practical filter
PASSIVE VS ACTIVE
R, L and C components
Maximal Gain=1
Loading effect
Simple
Passive Filters Active Filters
R, L and C components with
active (opamps)
Additional gain >1
No loading effect (Zout=0)
ORDER OF THE FILTER
➢ The filter’s order is represented in its
transfer function by the number of poles
or the denominator’s degree
➢ The higher the order the more complex
the circuit is and the sleepiest the transfer
function is.
FIRST ORDER LOW-PASS FILTER
By definition, a low-pass filter is a circuit offering easy passage to
low-frequency signals and difficult passage to high-frequency
signals. There are two basic kinds of circuits capable of
accomplishing this objective, and many variations of each one:
R1
1
3
C1
U1 U2
2
4
The capacitor's impedance decreases with increasing frequency. This
low impedance in parallel with the load resistance tends to short out
high-frequency signals, dropping most of the voltage gets across
series resistor R1.
FIRST ORDER LOW-PASS FILTER
0 dB
-3 dB .
Bode Plot
1/RC
Passes low frequencies
Attenuates high frequencies
1
x
0.707 Linear Plot
0 1/RC
TRANSFER FUNCTION
CUTOFF FREQUENCY
At cutoff frequency:
BODE PLOTS
In low-pass, for x << 1, we
have:
In low-pass, for x >> 1, we
have:
FIRST ORDER LOW-PASS FILTER
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FIRST ORDER HIGH-PASS FILTER
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REVIEW
• A low-pass filter allows for easy passage of low-frequency signals from source to load,
and difficult passage of high-frequency signals.
• Capacitive low-pass filters insert a resistor in series and a capacitor in parallel with the
load. The former filter design tries to "block" the unwanted frequency signal while the
latter tries to short it out.
• The cutoff frequency for a low-pass filter is that frequency at which the output (load)
voltage equals 70.7% of the input (source) voltage. Above the cutoff frequency, the
output voltage is lower than 70.7% of the input, and visa-versa.
EXAMPLES
EXAMPLES
