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Digital filter
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In electronics, computer science and mathematics, a digital filter is a system that performs mathematical operations on a sampled, discrete-time signal to reduce or enhance certain aspects of that signal. This is in contrast to the other major type of electronic filter, the analog filter, which is an electronic circuit operating on continuous-time analog signals.
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In electronics, computer science and mathematics, a digital filter is a system that performs mathematical operations on a sampled, discrete-time signal to reduce or enhance certain aspects of that signal. This is in contrast to the other major type of electronic filter, the analog filter, which is an electronic circuit operating on continuous-time analog signals. An analog signal may be processed by a digital filter by first being digitized and represented as a sequence of numbers, then manipulated mathematically, and then reconstructed as a new analog signal (see digital signal processing). In an analog filter, the input signal is "directly" manipulated by the circuit.
A digital filter system usually consists of an analog-to-digital converter (to sample the input signal), a microprocessor (often a specialized digital signal processor), and a digital-to-analog converter. Software running on the microprocessor can implement the digital filter by performing the necessary mathematical operations on the numbers received from the ADC. In some high performance applications, an FPGA or ASIC is used instead of a general purpose microprocessor.
Digital filters may be more expensive than an equivalent analog filter due to their increased complexity, but they make practical many designs that are impractical or impossible as analog filters. Since digital filters use a sampling process and discrete-time processing, they experience latency (the difference in time between the input and the response), which is almost irrelevant in analog filters.
Digital filters are commonplace and an essential element of everyday electronics such as radios, cellphones, and stereo receivers.
Characterization of digital filters
A digital filter is characterized by its transfer function, or equivalently, its difference equation. Mathematical analysis of the transfer function can describe how it will respond to any input. As such, designing a filter consists of developing specifications appropriate to the problem (for example, a second-order lowpass filter with a specific cut-off frequency), and then producing a transfer function which meets the specifications.
The transfer function for a linear, time-invariant, digital filter can be expressed as a transfer function in the Z-domain; if it is causal, then it has the form:
where the order of the filter is the greater of N or M.
See Z-transform's LCCD equation for further discussion of this transfer function.
This form is for a recursive filter, which typically leads to infinite impulse response behaviour, but if the denominator is unity, then this is the form for a finite impulse response filter.
Analysis techniques
A variety of mathematical techniques may be employed to analyze the behaviour of a given digital filter. Many of these analysis techniques may also be employed in designs, and often form the basis of a filter specification.
Typically, one analyzes filters by calculating how the filter will respond to a simple input. One can then extend this information to visualize the filter's response to more complex signals.
Impulse response
The impulse response, often denoted or is a measurement of how a filter will respond to the Kronecker delta function. For example, given a difference equation, one would set and for and evaluate. In the case of linear time-invariant FIR filters, the impulse response is exactly equal to the sequence of filter coefficients . In general, the impulse response is a characterization of the filter's behaviour.
A plot of the impulse response will help to reveal how a filter will respond to a sudden, momentary disturbance.
Filter design
The design of digital filters is a deceptively complex topic. Although filters are easily understood and calculated, the practical challenges of their design and implementation are significant and are the subject of much advanced research.
There are two categories of digital filter: the recursive filter and the nonrecursive filter. These are often referred to as infinite impulse response (IIR) filters and finite impulse response (FIR) filters, respectively.
Filter realization
After a filter is designed, it must be realized by developing a signal flow diagram that describes the filter in terms of operations on sample sequences.
A given transfer function may be realized in many ways. Consider how a simple expression such as could be evaluated – one could also compute the equivalent . In the same way, all realizations may be seen as "factorizations" of the same transfer function, but different realizations will have different numerical properties. Specifically, some realizations are more efficient in terms of the number of operations or storage elements required for their implementation, and others provide advantages such as improved numerical stability and reduced round-off error. Some structures are more optimal for fixed-point arithmetic and others may be more optimal for floating-point arithmetic.
Direct Form I
A straightforward approach for IIR filter realization is Direct Form I, where the difference equation is evaluated directly. This form is practical for small filters, but may be inefficient and impractical (numerically unstable) for complex designs. In general, this form requires 2N delay elements (for both input and output signals) for a filter of order N.
Direct Form II
The alternate Direct Form II only needs N delay units, where N is the order of the filter – potentially half as much as Direct Form I. The disadvantage is that Direct Form II increases the possibility of arithmetic overflow for filters of high Q or resonance. It has been shown that as Q increases, the round-off noise of both direct form topologies increases without bounds. This is because, conceptually, the signal is first passed through an all-pole filter (which normally boosts gain at the resonant frequencies) before the result of that is saturated, then passed through an all-zero filter (which often attenuates much of what the all-pole half amplifies).
Cascaded second-order sections
A common strategy is to realize a higher-order (greater than 2) digital filter as a cascaded series of second-order "biquadratric" (or "biquad") sections (see digital biquad filter). Advantages of this strategy is that the coefficient range is limited. Cascading direct form II sections result in N delay elements for filter order of N. Cascading direct form I sections result in N+2 delay elements since the delay elements of the input of any section (except the first section) are a redundant with the delay elements of the output of the preceding section.
Difference equation
In discrete-time systems, the digital filter is often implemented by converting the transfer function to a linear constant-coefficient difference equation (LCCD) via the Z-transform. The discrete frequency-domain transfer function is written as the ratio of two polynomials. For example:
This is expanded:
and divided by the highest order of :
The coefficients of the denominator, , are the 'feed-backward' coefficients and the coefficients of the numerator are the 'feed-forward' coefficients, . The resultant linear difference equation is:
or, for the example:
This equation shows how to compute the next output sample, , in terms of the past outputs, , the present input, , and the past inputs, . In this form, the filter is amenable to numerical simulation via straightforward iteration.
Other Forms
Other forms include:
- Series/cascade
- Parallel
- Ladder form
- Lattice form
- Coupled normal form
- Multifeedback
- Analog-inspired forms such as Sallen-key and state variable filters
- Systolic arrays
Comparison of analog and digital filters
Digital filters are not subject to the component non-linearities that greatly complicate the design of analog filters. Analog filters consist of imperfect electronic components, whose values are specified to a limit tolerance (e.g. resistor values often have a tolerance of +/- 5%) and which may also change with temperature and drift with time. As the order of an analog filter increases, and thus its component count, the effect of variable component errors is greatly magnified. In digital filters, the coefficient values are stored in computer memory, making them far more stable and predictable.
Because the coefficients of digital filters are definite, they can be used to achieve much more complex and selective designs – specifically with digital filters, one can achieve a lower passband ripple, faster transition, and higher stopband attenuation than is practical with analog filters. Even if the design could be achieved using analog filters, the engineering cost of designing an equivalent digital filter would likely be much lower. Furthermore, one can readily modify the coefficients of a digital filter to make an adaptive filter or a user-controllable parametric filter. While these techniques are possible in an analog filter, they are again considerably more difficult.
Digital filters can be used in the design of finite impulse response filters. Analog filters do not have the same capability, because finite impulse response filters require delay elements.
Digital filters rely less on analog circuitry, potentially allowing for a better signal-to-noise ratio. A digital filter will introduce noise to a signal during analog low pass filtering, analog to digital conversion, digital to analog conversion and may introduce digital noise due to quantization. With analog filters, every component is a source of thermal noise (such as Johnson noise), so as the filter complexity grows, so does the noise.
However, digital filters do introduce a higher fundamental latency to the system. In an analog filter, latency is often negligible; strictly speaking it is the time for an electrical signal to propagate through the filter circuit. In digital filters, latency is a function of the number of delay elements in the system.
Digital filters also tend to be more limited in bandwidth than analog filters. High bandwidth digital filters require expensive ADC/DACs and fast computer hardware for processing.
In very simple cases, it is more cost effective to use an analog filter. Introducing a digital filter requires considerable overhead circuitry, as previously discussed, including two low pass analog filters.
Types of digital filters
Many digital filters are based on the Fast Fourier transform, a mathematical algorithm that quickly extracts the frequency spectrum of a signal, allowing the spectrum to be manipulated (such as to create band-pass filters) before converting the modified spectrum back into a time-series signal.
Another form of a digital filter is that of a state-space model.
A well used state-space filter is the Kalman filter published by Rudolf Kalman in 1960.
See also
External links
- – Free filter design software
- – Free customizable digital filter design software built with python and boost (WinXP/Ubuntu 6.10/RHEL-4). Also with interactive web interface.
- – Free filter design software
- – Filter design wizard (FIR, IIR)
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