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Introduction
Electrical filters permeate modern electronic systems so much that it is imperative
for an electronic circuit or system designer to have at least some basic under-
standing of these filters. The electronic systems that employ filtering process are
varied, such as communications, radar, consumer electronics, military, medical
instrumentation, and space exploration. An electrical filter is a network that trans-
forms an electrical signal applied to its input such that the signal at the output
has specified characteristics, which may be stated in the frequency or the time
domain, depending upon the application. Thus, in some cases the filter exhibits a
frequency-selective property, such as passing some frequency components in the
input signal, while rejecting (stopping) signals at other frequencies.
The developments of filters started around 1915 with the advent of the electric
wave filter by Campbell and Wagner, in connection with telephone communication.
The early design advanced by Campbell, Zobel, and others made use of passive
lumped elements, namely, resistors, inductors, and capacitors, and was based on
image parameters (see for example, Ruston and Bordogna, 1971). This is known
as the classical filter theory and it yields reasonably good filters without very
sophisticated mathematical techniques.
Modern filter theory owes its origin to Cauer, Darlington, and others, and the
development of the theory started in the 1930s. Major advancements in filter theory
took place in the 1930s and 1940s. However, the filters were still passive structures
using R, L,andC elements. One of the most important applications of passive
filters has been in the design of channel bank filters in frequency division multiplex
telephone systems.
Introduction of silicon integrated circuit (IC) technology together with the
development of operational amplifiers (OAs) shifted the focus of filter designers in
the 1960s to realize inductorless filters for low-frequency (voice band 300–3400 Hz)
applications. Thus ensued the era of active-RC filters, with OA being the active
element. With computer-controlled laser trimming, the values of the resistances
in thick and thin film technologies could be controlled accurately and this led to
widespread use of such low-frequency (up to about 4 kHz) active-RC filters in the
pulse code modulation (PCM) system in telephonic communication.
Owing to the difficulty in fabricating large-valued resistors in the same
process as the OA, low-frequency filters could not be built as monolithic
devices. However, the observation that certain configurations of capacitors and
Modern Analog Filter Analysis and Design: A Practical Approach. Rabin Raut and M. N. S. Swamy
Copyright
2010 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim
ISBN: 978-3-527-40766-8