R 5

1 k
C 3
1 u F
V 1
1 V
1 k H z
0 D e g




R6
1k
C 4
1uF
V 3
1 V
1 k Hz
0 De g
Passive and active filters

In the first lab, you investigated the characteristics of simple, passive low and high pass filter
circuits. These are called passive because they do not require any external power source.

Low Pass

0
1
RC
=

















High Pass


0
1
RC
=






















Band Pass:

























(Notice that the scale on the axes in these plots is different than the examples on the last
page. This band-pass filter has a very wide pass-band of ~ 100Hz to 1MHz).


Of course it is always possible to produce a better filter (i.e. faster drop-off in signal strength
in the reject band) by cascading several filters one after the other. However, this also partly
reduces the signal in the pass band region.









V1
1 V
1kHz
0Deg
R5
100
C3
1nF
C4
1uF
R6
1k


The problem with passive filters is that their gain is always less than or equal to 1. In other
words, if the signal in the pass band region has to be amplified, then you need an active
filter. The simplest solution is to take the output from a passive filter and amplify it with an
op-amp circuit. Here, the low-pass filter is designed to have
0
=320Hz and the high-pass to
have
0
=70Hz. The op-amp is designed to have a gain of 10 for the pass band region:
































In the .ms9 file included with this tutorial, you should vary the values of the components to
see how they affect the characteristics of the filter. You should also try to build a better filter
with a faster drop-off in the reject band by simply cascading another band-pass filter before
the op-amp.



V1
1 V
1kHz
0Deg
R5
500
C3
1uF
C4
1uF
R6
2.27k
U3
OPAMP_3T_VIRTUAL
R3
24k
R4
1k

It is also possible to build another type of active filter known as the Sallen-Key filter (also
included in the .ms9 file with this tutorial). Again, you should try changing the values and
observing the change in the filter characteristics.




































Here, the middle frequency (in the pass band region) is given by
1
2 RC
where R is the
value of R2 and R7 (which are equal) and C is the value of C1 and C2 (which are equal).

The gain at this middle frequency is given by
3
G
G
where G =
1
1
9
R
R
+ .

R.A. Mir


U 1
OPAMP_3T_VI RTUAL
R1
1. 727k
R2
815
C1
1uF
C 2
1uF
R7
815
R8
1. 63k
V2
1 V
1kHz
0Deg
R9
1k
X B P 1
IN OUT