ANTIALIASING FILTERS- BUTTERWORTH LOWPASS FILTER

OVERVIEW

The Butterworth filter is one type of electronic filter design. It is designed to have a frequency response which is as flat as mathematically possible in the passband. Another name for them is 'maximally flat magnitude' filters.

The frequency response of the Butterworth filter is maximally flat (has no ripples) in the passband, and rolls off towards zero in the stopband. When viewed on a logarithmic Bode plot, the response slopes off linearly towards negative infinity. For a first-order filter, the response rolls off at −6 dB per octave (−20 dB per decade) (all first-order filters, regardless of name, have the same normalized frequency response). For a second-order Butterworth filter, the response decreases at −12 dB per octave, a third-order at −18 dB, and so on. Butterworth filters have a monotonically changing magnitude function with ω. The Butterworth is the only filter that maintains this same shape for higher orders (but with a steeper decline in the stopband) whereas other varieties of filters (Bessel, Chebyshev, elliptic) have different shapes at higher orders.

Compared with a Chebyshev Type I/Type II filter or an elliptic filter, the Butterworth filter has a slower roll-off, and thus will require a higher order to implement a particular stopband specification. However, Butterworth filter will have a more linear phase response in the passband than the Chebyshev Type I/Type II and elliptic filters.