Design of 2$^{nd}$ order low-pass active filters by preserving the physical meaning of design variables

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is, by one hand, offer to students basics on active filter design by introducing the Butterworth approach as well as some practical examples not only to show the proposed design flow (DF), but also to show that the design flow's stages have physical meaning mainly supported on physical laws. With the help of these laws, further, it is shown how additional filter design specifications can be translated to the physical design without affect neither the design approach nor DF. On the other hand, because any physical implementation suffer of the non-idealities of electronic components, the modeling of some of them based on both experimental results and spice simulations is presented in order to show how unwanted effects may be added to the DF. An advantage of this proposal is that DF preserves the physical meaning of the design variables. The laboratory-based learning adopted in this work has allowed to students be able to understand physical concepts, capture and analyze experimental data, and use design tools in a correct way mainly to avoid ``trial and error'' approaches.