Giuseppe Querques 0749012

Feb 16, 2016

3TR4 Lab 1: Open Ended Active Filter Design

Part I: Filter Analysis
Upon beginning the laboratory experimentation, it was explained to our group that
the 1st and 3rd order transformed harmonics of a square wave (using our given
waveform generator) had an inherent difference of 10 dB in magnitude. Therefore it
was deemed that our design only needed to incorporate a 20 dB gain reduction
between the 3dB cutoff frequency, and the stopband frequencies (where the 3 dB
cutoff frequency was assumed to be our 1 st harmonic, and the stopband was
assumed to be at the 3rd harmonic). Utilizing the given manual for Butterworth filter
design, the following key features of an active Butterworth filter were found:

From: Integrated Electronics, Millman & Halkias. McGraw Hill. 1972.

Therefore, to design our filter, our group would need to decide upon an arbitrary
cutoff value for wo as a basis for our calculations. Initially, 30000 rad/s was selected
(4774 Hz), but was found to be unsuitable for the selected experimental process (ie,
the frequencies were too high, and a cutoff filter would be required to have a very
tight bandwidth to accurately filter so that the 1 st and 3rd harmonics to generate 20
dB gain reduction in a low-order Butterworth design). It was stated in the Integrated
Electronics article on Butterworth filters that commercially available op-amps can
have unity gain products as has as 100 MHz, and it is possible to design active
filters up to frequencies of several MHz, however, for the purpose of our
experimentation, we did not want to encounter high frequency slewing rate errors,
or be required to use series of resistors and capacitors to achieve our required
calculated values to realize our filter design. The group decided to lower the w o
value to 500 rad/s and was able to redo their calculations as seen on the following
page.

Using the following table, a third order Butterworth filter was selected as the basis
of our calculations:

From: Integrated Electronics, Millman & Halkias. McGraw

Hill. 1972.
Reasons for choosing a cascading third order Butterworth filter was due to ease of
calculations (as seen in a third order design - leading Butterworth coefficients were
1 for both gain stages). Having Butterworth coefficient of 1 allowed for both gain
stages to have a gain value of 2, as seen in the calculations [next page]. Since both
gain stages had a gain of 2, a third order Butterworth filter also allowed for simple
design, since all resistors could be the same value of 10K ohms to achieve this gain
staging.
3rd Order Butterworth filter was realized in our implementation as follows:

Calculations and rough design for the 3 rd order Butterworth filter are on the
following page:

Results obtained were as follows:

Input signal: square wave.
Note 10dB gain reduction
measured between 1st and 3rd
harmonics as theorized.

Output signal: smooth sine

wave. Note ~30 dB gain
reduction measured between
1st and 3rd harmonics as
theorized.