Infinite impulse response (IIR) is a property of
signal processingSignal processing is an area of systems engineering, electrical engineering and applied mathematics that deals with operations on or analysis of signals, in either discrete or continuous time...
systems. Systems with this property are known as
IIR systems or, when dealing with
filterIn signal processing, a filter is a device or process that removes from a signal some unwanted component or feature. Filtering is a class of signal processing, the defining feature of filters being the complete or partial suppression of some aspect of the signal...
systems, as
IIR filters. IIR systems have an
impulse responseIn signal processing, the impulse response, or impulse response function , of a dynamic system is its output when presented with a brief input signal, called an impulse. More generally, an impulse response refers to the reaction of any dynamic system in response to some external change...
function that is non-zero over an infinite length of time. This is in contrast to
finite impulse responseA finite impulse response filter is a type of a signal processing filter whose impulse response is of finite duration, because it settles to zero in finite time. This is in contrast to infinite impulse response filters, which have internal feedback and may continue to respond indefinitely...
(FIR) filters, which have fixed-duration impulse responses. The simplest analog IIR filter is an
RCA resistor–capacitor circuit ', or RC filter or RC network, is an electric circuit composed of resistors and capacitors driven by a voltage or current source...
filter made up of a single
resistorA linear resistor is a linear, passive two-terminal electrical component that implements electrical resistance as a circuit element.The current through a resistor is in direct proportion to the voltage across the resistor's terminals. Thus, the ratio of the voltage applied across a resistor's...
(R) feeding into a node shared with a single
capacitorA capacitor is a passive two-terminal electrical component used to store energy in an electric field. The forms of practical capacitors vary widely, but all contain at least two electrical conductors separated by a dielectric ; for example, one common construction consists of metal foils separated...
(C). This filter has an exponential impulse response characterized by an
RC time constantIn an RC circuit, the value of the time constant is equal to the product of the circuit resistance and the circuit capacitance , i.e. \tau = R × C. It is the time required to charge the capacitor, through the resistor, to 63.2 percent of full charge; or to discharge it to 36.8 percent of its...
.
IIR filters may be implemented as either analog or
digital filterIn 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...
s. In digital IIR filters, the output feedback is immediately apparent in the equations defining the output. Note that unlike
FIRA finite impulse response filter is a type of a signal processing filter whose impulse response is of finite duration, because it settles to zero in finite time. This is in contrast to infinite impulse response filters, which have internal feedback and may continue to respond indefinitely...
filters, in designing IIR filters it is necessary to carefully consider the "time zero" case in which the outputs of the filter have not yet been clearly defined.
Design of digital IIR filters is heavily dependent on that of their analog counterparts because there are plenty of resources, works and straightforward design methods concerning analog feedback filter design while there are hardly any for digital IIR filters. As a result, usually, when a digital IIR filter is going to be implemented, an analog filter (e.g.
Chebyshev filterChebyshev filters are analog or digital filters having a steeper roll-off and more passband ripple or stopband ripple than Butterworth filters...
,
Butterworth filterThe Butterworth filter is a type of signal processing filter designed to have as flat a frequency response as possible in the passband so that it is also termed a maximally flat magnitude filter...
,
Elliptic filterAn elliptic filter is a signal processing filter with equalized ripple behavior in both the passband and the stopband...
) is first designed and then is converted to a digital filter by applying
discretizationIn mathematics, discretization concerns the process of transferring continuous models and equations into discrete counterparts. This process is usually carried out as a first step toward making them suitable for numerical evaluation and implementation on digital computers...
techniques such as
Bilinear transformThe bilinear transform is used in digital signal processing and discrete-time control theory to transform continuous-time system representations to discrete-time and vice versa....
or
Impulse invarianceImpulse invariance is a technique for designing discrete-time infinite-impulse-response filters from continuous-time filters in which the impulse response of the continuous-time system is sampled to produce the impulse response of the discrete-time system...
.
Example IIR filters include the
Chebyshev filterChebyshev filters are analog or digital filters having a steeper roll-off and more passband ripple or stopband ripple than Butterworth filters...
,
Butterworth filterThe Butterworth filter is a type of signal processing filter designed to have as flat a frequency response as possible in the passband so that it is also termed a maximally flat magnitude filter...
, and the
Bessel filterIn electronics and signal processing, a Bessel filter is a type of linear filter with a maximally flat group delay . Bessel filters are often used in audio crossover systems...
.
Transfer function derivation
Digital filters are often described and implemented in terms of the difference equation that defines how the output signal is related to the input signal:
where:
is the feedforward filter order
are the feedforward filter coefficients
is the feedback filter order
are the feedback filter coefficients
is the input signal
is the output signal.
A more condensed form of the difference equation is:
which, when rearranged, becomes:
To find the
transfer functionA transfer function is a mathematical representation, in terms of spatial or temporal frequency, of the relation between the input and output of a linear time-invariant system. With optical imaging devices, for example, it is the Fourier transform of the point spread function i.e...
of the filter, we first take the
Z-transformIn mathematics and signal processing, the Z-transform converts a discrete time-domain signal, which is a sequence of real or complex numbers, into a complex frequency-domain representation....
of each side of the above equation, where we use the time-shift property to obtain:
We define the transfer function to be:
Considering that in most IIR filter designs coefficient
is 1, the IIR filter transfer function takes the more traditional form:
Description of block diagram
A typical block diagram of an IIR filter looks like the following. The
block is a unit delay. The coefficients and number of feedback/feedforward paths are implementation-dependent.
Stability
The transfer function allows us to judge whether or not a system is bounded-input, bounded-output (BIBO) stable. To be specific, the BIBO stability criteria requires that the
ROCIn mathematics, the radius of convergence of a power series is a quantity, either a non-negative real number or ∞, that represents a domain in which the series will converge. Within the radius of convergence, a power series converges absolutely and uniformly on compacta as well...
of the system includes the unit circle. For example, for a causal system, all poles of the transfer function have to have an absolute value smaller than one. In other words, all poles must be located within a unit circle in the
-plane.
The poles are defined as the values of
which make the denominator of
equal to 0:
Clearly, if
then the poles are not located at the origin of the z-plane. This is in contrast to the
FIRA finite impulse response filter is a type of a signal processing filter whose impulse response is of finite duration, because it settles to zero in finite time. This is in contrast to infinite impulse response filters, which have internal feedback and may continue to respond indefinitely...
filter where all poles are located at the origin, and is therefore always stable.
IIR filters are sometimes preferred over FIR filters because an IIR filter can achieve a much sharper transition region
roll-offRoll-off is a term commonly used to describe the steepness of a transmission function with frequency, particularly in electrical network analysis, and most especially in connection with filter circuits in the transition between a passband and a stopband...
than FIR filter of the same order.
Example
Let the transfer function of a filter
H be
with
ROCIn mathematics, the radius of convergence of a power series is a quantity, either a non-negative real number or ∞, that represents a domain in which the series will converge. Within the radius of convergence, a power series converges absolutely and uniformly on compacta as well...
and
which has a pole at
a, is stable and causal.
The time-domain
impulse responseIn signal processing, the impulse response, or impulse response function , of a dynamic system is its output when presented with a brief input signal, called an impulse. More generally, an impulse response refers to the reaction of any dynamic system in response to some external change...
is
which is non-zero for
.
Applications
The main advantage IIR filters have over FIR filters is that through recursion they use fewer taps. Therefore in digital signal processing applications IIR filters use fewer computing resources than an equivalent FIR filter. A disadvantage of IIR filters is they can be unstable and subject to limit cycle behavior.
See also
- Autoregressive model
In statistics and signal processing, an autoregressive model is a type of random process which is often used to model and predict various types of natural phenomena...
- Electronic filter
Electronic filters are electronic circuits which perform signal processing functions, specifically to remove unwanted frequency components from the signal, to enhance wanted ones, or both...
- Finite impulse response
A finite impulse response filter is a type of a signal processing filter whose impulse response is of finite duration, because it settles to zero in finite time. This is in contrast to infinite impulse response filters, which have internal feedback and may continue to respond indefinitely...
- Recurrence relation
In mathematics, a recurrence relation is an equation that recursively defines a sequence, once one or more initial terms are given: each further term of the sequence is defined as a function of the preceding terms....
, mathematical formalization
- System analysis
System analysis in the field of electrical engineering characterizes electrical systems and their properties. System Analysis can be used to represent almost anything from population growth to audio speakers, electrical engineers often use it because of its direct relevance to many areas of their...
External links