FILTER CIRCUITS (ANALOG) VIDEO CIRCUITS Dec 03, 2002

Analog Filter Design Demystified

This article shows the reader how to design analog filters. It starts by
covering the fundamentals of filters, it then goes on to introduce the basic
types like Butterworth, Chebyshev, and Bessel, and then guides the reader
through the design process for lowpass and highpass filters. Includes the
derivation of the equations and the circuit implementation.

It's a jungle out there.

A small tribe, in the dense wilderness, is much sought after by head hunters from the
surrounding plains. Known throughout the land for their esoteric expertise, this is the tribe of the
Analog Engineers, who live in the farthest regions of the left half Plains, past the jungles of
Laplace.

The guru of analog engineers is the Analog Filter Designer, who sits on the throne of his
kingdom and imparts wisdom. You never get to see him even, with an appointment, and you call
him "Sir."

The countless pages of equations found in most books on filter design can frighten small dogs,
and digital designers. This article clears a path through the brush for the practical engineer and
unravels the mystery of filter design, enabling you to design continuous-time analog filters
quickly and with a minimum of mathematics.

The Theory of Analog Electronics

Analog electronics has two distinct sides: the theory taught by academic institutions (equations
of stability, phase-shift calculations, etc.), and the practical side familiar to most engineers (avoid
oscillation by tweaking the gain with a capacitor, etc.). Unfortunately, filter design is based firmly
on long-established equations and tables of theoretical results. Filter design from theoretical
equations can prove arduous. Consequently, this discussion employs a minimum of math—either
in translating the theoretical tables into practical component values, or in deriving the response
of a general-purpose filter.

The Fundamentals

Simple RC lowpass filters have the transfer function

 .

Cascading such filters complicates the response by giving rise to quadratic equations in the
denominator of the transfer function. Thus, the denominator of the transfer function for any
second-order lowpass filter is as2+ bs + c. Substituting values for a, b and c determines the filter
response over frequency. Anyone who remembers high school math will note that the above
expression equals zero for certain values of "s" given by the equation

At the values of "s" for which this quadratic equation equals zero, the transfer function has
theoretically infinite gain. These values, which establish the performance of each type of filter
over frequency, are known as the poles of the quadratic equation. Poles usually occur as pairs,
in the form of a complex number (a + jb) and its complex conjugate (a - jb). The term jb is
sometimes zero.

The thought of a transfer function with infinite gain may frighten nervous readers, but in practice
it isn't a problem. The pole's real part "a" indicates how the filter responds to transients, and its
imaginary part "jb" indicates the response over frequency. As long as this real part is negative,
the system is stable. The following text explains how to transfer the tables of poles found in
many text books into component values suitable for circuit design.

Filter Types

The most common filter responses are the Butterworth, Chebyshev, and Bessel types. Many
other types are available, but 90% of all applications can be solved with one of these three.
Butterworth ensures a flat response in the pass band and an adequate rate of rolloff. A good "all
rounder," the Butterworth filter is simple to understand and suitable for applications such as
audio processing. The Chebyshev gives a much steeper rolloff, but passband ripple makes it
unsuitable for audio systems. It is superior for applications in which the passband includes only
one frequency of interest (e.g., the derivation of a sinewave from a square wave, by filtering out
the harmonics).

The Bessel filter gives a constant propagation delay across the input frequency spectrum.
Therefore, applying a square wave (consisting of a fundamental and many harmonics) to the
input of a Bessel filter yields an output square wave with no overshoot (all the frequencies are
delayed by the same amount). Other filters delay the harmonics by different amounts, resulting
in an overshoot on the output waveform. One other popular filter, the elliptical type, is a much
more complicated beast that will not be discussed in this text. Similar to the Chebyshev
response, it has ripple in the passband and severe rolloff at the expense of ripple in the stop
band.

Standard Filter Blocks

The generic filter structure (Figure 1a) lets you realize a highpass or lowpass implementation by
substituting capacitors or resistors in place of components G1-G4. Considering the effect of
these components on the op-amp feedback network, one can easily derive a lowpass filter by
making G2/G4 into capacitors and G1/G3 into resistors. (Vice versa yields the highpass
implementation.)

Figure 1. By substituting for G1-G4 in the generic filter block (a), you can implement a lowpass
filter (b) or a highpass filter (c).

The transfer function for the lowpass filter (Figure 1b) is

This equation is simpler with conductances. Replace the capacitors with a conductance of sC,
and the resistors with a conductance of G. If this looks complicated, you can "normalize" the
equation. Set the resistors equal to 1 or the capacitors equal to 1F, and change the
surrounding components to fit the response. Thus, with all resistor values equal to 1 , the
lowpass transfer function is

This transfer function describes the response of a generic, second-order lowpass filter. We now
take the theoretical tables of poles that describe the three main filter responses, and translate
them into real component values.

The Design Process

To determine the filter type required, you should use the above descriptions to select the
passband performance needed. The simplest way to determine filter order is to design a second-
order filter stage, and then cascade multiple versions of it as required. Check to see if the result
gives the desired stopband rejection, and then proceed with correct pole locations as shown in
the tables in the appendix. Once pole locations are established, the component values can soon
be calculated.

First, transform each pole location into a quadratic expression similar to that in the denominator
of our generic second-order filter. If a quadratic equation has poles of (a ± jb), then it has roots
of (s - a - jb) and (s - a + jb). When these roots are multiplied together, the resulting quadratic
expression is s2 - 2as + a2 + b2.

In the pole tables a is always negative, so for convenience we declare s2 + 2as + a2 + b2, and
use the magnitude of a regardless of its sign. To put this into practice, consider a fourth-order
Butterworth filter. The poles and the quadratic expression corresponding to each pole location
are as follows:

Poles (a ± jb) Quadratic expression

 -0.9239 ± j0.3827 s2 + 1.8478s + 1

-0.3827 ± j0.9239 s2 + 0.7654s + 1

You can design a fourth-order Butterworth lowpass filter with this information. Simply substitute
values from the above quadratic expressions into the denominator of Equation 1. Thus, C2C4 =
1 and 2C4 = 1.8478 in the first filter, implying that C4 = 0.9239F and C2 = 1.08F. For the second
filter, C2C4 = 1 and 2C4 = 0.7654, implying that C4 = 0.3827F and C2 = 2.61F. All resistors in
both filters equal 1 . Cascading these two second-order filters yields a fourth-order Butterworth
response with rolloff frequency of 1rad/s, but the component values are impossible to find. If the
frequency or component values above are not suitable, read on.

It so happens that if you maintain the ratio of the reactances to the resistors, the circuit response
remains unchanged. You might therefore choose 1k resistors. To ensure that the reactances
increase in the same proportion as the resistances, divide the capacitor values by 1000.

We still have the perfect Butterworth response, but unfortunately the rolloff frequency is 1rad/s.
To change the circuit's frequency response, we must maintain the ratio of reactances to
resistances but simply at a different frequency. For a rolloff of 1kHz rather than 1rad/s, the
capacitor value must be further reduced by a factor of 2 x 1000. Thus, the capacitor's
reactance does not reach the original (normalized) value until the higher frequency. The
resulting fourth-order Butterworth lowpass filter with 1kHz rolloff takes the form of Figure 2.

Figure 2. These two non-identical 2nd-order filter sections form a 4th-order Butterworth lowpass
filter.

Using the above technique, you can obtain any even-order filter response by cascading second-
order filters. Note, however, that a fourth-order Butterworth filter is not obtained simply by
calculating the components for a second order filter and then cascading two such stages. Two
second-order filters must be designed, each with different pole locations. If the filter has an odd
order, you can simply cascade second-order filters, and add an RC network to gain the extra
pole. For example, a fifth-order Chebyshev filter with 1dB ripple has the following poles:
 Poles Quadratic

-0.2265 ± j0.5918 s2 + 0.453s + 0.402 2.488s2 + 1.127s + 1

-0.08652 ± j0.9575 s2 + 0.173s + 0.924 1.08s2 + 0.187s + 1

-0.2800 see text

To ensure conformance with the generic filter described by Equation 1, and to ensure that the
last term equals unity, the first two quadratics have been multiplied by a constant. Thus, in the
first filter C2C4 = 2.488 and 2C4 = 1.127, implying that C4 = 0.5635F and C2 = 4.41F. For the
second filter, C2C4 = 1.08 and 2C4 = 0.187, implying that C4 = 0.0935F and C2 = 11.55F.

Earlier, it was shown that an RC circuit has a pole when 1 + sCR = 0: . If R = 1, then to
obtain the final pole at s = -0.28 you must set C = 3.57F. Using 1k resistors, you can
normalize for a 1kHz rolloff frequency as shown in Figure 3. Thus, designers can boldly go and
design lowpass filters of any order at any frequency.

Figure 3. A 5th-order, 1dB-ripple Chebyshev lowpass filter is constructed from two non-identical
2nd-order sections and an output RC network.

All of this theory applies also to the design of highpass filters. It has been shown that a simple
RC lowpass filter has the transfer function .

Similarly, a simple RC highpass filter has the transfer function .

Normalising these functions to correspond with the normalized pole tables gives for
lowpass and for highpass.

Note that the highpass pole positions "s" can be obtained by inverting the lowpass pole
positions. Inserting those values into the highpass filter block ensures the correct frequency
response. To obtain the transfer function for the highpass filter block, we need to go back to the
transfer function of the lowpass filter block. Thus, from

we obtain the transfer function of the equivalent highpass filter block by interchanging capacitors
and resistors:

Again, life is much simpler if capacitors are normalized instead of resistors:

Equation 2 is the transfer function of the highpass filter block. This time we calculate resistor
values instead of capacitor values. Given the general highpass filter response, we can derive
the highpass pole positions by inverting the lowpass pole positions and continuing as before.
Inverting a complex-pole location is easier said than done, however. As an example, consider
the fifth-order, 1dB-ripple Chebyshev filter discussed earlier. It has two pole positions at (-0.2265
± j0.5918).

The easiest way to invert a complex number is to multiply and divide by the complex conjugate,
thereby obtaining a real number in the numerator. You then find the reciprocal by inverting the
fraction.

Thus, gives , and inverting gives . The

newly derived pole positions can then be converted to the corresponding quadratic expression,
and values calculated as before. The result is:

Poles Quadratic

-0.564 ± j1.474 s2 + 1.128s + 2.490 0.401s2 + 0.453s + 1

From Equation 2 we can calculate the first filter component values as R2R4 = 0.401 and 2R2 =
0.453, implying that R2 = 0.227 and R4 = 1.77 . This procedure can then be repeated for the
other pole locations.

Because it has been shown that , a simpler approach is to design for a lowpass filter
using suitable lowpass poles, and then treat every pole in the filter as a single RC circuit. To
invert each lowpass pole to obtain the corresponding highpass pole, simply invert the value of
CR. Once the highpass pole locations are obtained, we ensure the correct frequency response
by interposing the capacitors and resistors.

A normalized capacitor value was calculated for the lowpass implementation, assuming that R =
1 . Hence the value of CR equals the value of C, and the reciprocal of the value of C is the
highpass pole. Treating this pole as the new value of R yields the appropriate highpass
component value.

Considering again the fifth-order, 1dB-ripple Chebyshev lowpass filter, the calculated capacitor
values are C4 = 0.5635F and C2 = 4.41F. To obtain the equivalent highpass resistor values,
invert the values of C (to obtain highpass pole locations), and treat these poles as the new
normalized resistor values: R4 = 1.77, and R2 = 0.227. This approach provides the same results
as does the more formal method mentioned earlier.

Thus, the Figure 3 circuit can now be converted to a highpass filter with 1kHz rolloff by inverting
the normalized capacitor values, interposing the resistors and capacitors, and scaling the values
accordingly. Earlier, we divided by 2 fR to normalize the lowpass values. The scaling factor in
this case is 2 fC, where C is the capacitor value and f is the frequency in Hertz. The resulting
circuit is Figure 4, and a SPICE simulation shows expected characteristics at the output of each
filter (Figure 5).
Figure 4. Transposing resistors and capacitors in the Figure 3 circuit yields a 5th-order, 1dB-
ripple Chebyshev highpass filter.

Figure 5. These SPICE outputs simulate the response of the highpass and lowpass Chebyshev
circuits.

Conclusion

Using the above methods, you can design lowpass and highpass filters with response at any
frequency. Bandpass and bandstop filters can also be implemented (with single op amps) using
techniques similar to those shown, but those applications are beyond the scope of this article.
You can, however, implement bandpass and bandstop filters by cascading lowpass and
highpass filters. Information on Maxim op amps can be found at the Maxim website (www.maxim-
ic.com).

Table 1

Butterworth Pole Locations

Order Real Imaginary
-a +/-jb
2 0.7071 0.7071

3 0.5000 0.8660
1.0000

4 0.9239 0.3827
0.3827 0.9239

5 0.8090 0.5878
0.3090 0.9511
1.0000

6 0.9659 0.2588
0.7071 0.7071
0.2588 0.9659

7 0.9010 0.4339
0.6235 0.7818
0.2225 0.9749
1.0000

8 0.9808 0.1951
0.8315 0.5556
0.5556 0.8315
0.1951 0.9808
 9 0.9397 0.3420
0.7660 0.6428
0.5000 0.8660
0.1737 0.9848
1.0000

10 0.9877 0.1564
0.8910 0.4540
0.7071 0.7071

More Information

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