Tuning elliptic filters with a ‘tuning biquad’

This paper presents an optimum tuning procedure for high-order low-pass (LP) elliptic filters. Since elliptic filters are often used to satisfy very tight specifications, they often need to be tuned accurately. In this paper, we describe the tuning of one biquad, the ‘tuning biquad’, in a cascade of biquads. It is shown by Matlab simulations that the best choice for the tuning biquad consists of the pole pair with the highest pole Q (‘maximum-Q poles’) combined with the zero pair with the lowest frequency (‘minimum-frequency zeros’). We also show how standard tuning procedures, such as those for the Tow-Thomas biquad, lead to excellent results. As an example, the tuning procedure is performed on a normalized sevent-horder elliptic LP filter.