BME 302 Bioinstrumentation

ANALOG CIRCUITS (FILTERS)

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 Why do we need an analog filter?

Skin MCU

Body

Electrodes Instrumentation Bandpass filter Non-inverting ADC Signal

(differential) amplifier Processing
amplifier

• Aliasing Filter (Analog Low-Pass Filter)

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 Frequency vs. Normalized Frequency vs.
Normalized Angular Frequency
• In analog signal, a signal frequency is expressed by cycles per second.

• In digital signal, a signal frequency is expressed by cycles per sample, which is called
normalized frequency or digital frequency

• The normalized frequency is the ratio between the analog frequency and the sampling
frequency. It ranges 0 to 1.

• Normalized angular frequency is normalized frequency multiplied by . It ranges 0 to .

Ex) Suppose a sinusoidal signal is periodic with 20 times per second, and the signal is
sampled 100 times per second.

If the signal is an analog signal, we say that the signal frequency is 20Hz.
If the signal is a digital signal, we say the normalized frequency (digital frequency) is 0.2 Hz.
Thus, for the digital signal, we should consider the sampling frequency.
 Frequency vs. Normalized Frequency vs.
Normalized Angular Frequency

• : sampling frequency (rate)

𝑓
𝑓 0= • (Analog) frequency
𝑓𝑠
• Normalized frequency : ranges 0 to 1 Hz

• Normalized angular frequency : ranges 0 to

Ex) You have a 60 Hz analog signal, which is then sampled by 1000 Hz.

Then, the normalized frequency is 0.06 Hz (cycles/sample). It means that it takes 17

(=1/0.06) samples to generate one cycle of the signal.
What are the Underlying Rhythms?

One rhythm
5 seconds/cycle or
12 times/min

5 seconds/cycle
=1/5 cycle/second
1/5 cycle/second
=0.2 Hz
What are the Underlying Rhythms?
Frequency Analysis is Better than Time-series Analysis

Three Different Rhythms

High Frequency = 0.25 Hz (15 cycles/min)

Low Frequency = 0.1 Hz (6 cycles/min)
Very Low Frequency = 0.016 Hz (1 cycle/min)
 Nyquist-Shannon Theorem

The minimum sampling frequency of a signal that it will not distort its
underlying information, should be double the frequency of its highest
frequency component.

• If fS is the sampling frequency, then the critical frequency (or Nyquist limit,
Nyquist frequency) fN is defined as equal to fS/2.

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 Nyquist Frequency

Analog signal 10Hz, Sampling frequency 20Hz (Nyquist frequency is 20/2 = 10Hz)

Digital signal: 10 Hz

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Nyquist Frequency Less than Signal Frequency
• Aliasing is an undesired effect in which the sampling frequency is too low
to accurately reproduce the original analog content, resulting in signal
distortion.
Analog signal 10Hz, Sampling frequency 15Hz
- With 15 Hz sampling frequency, 7.5Hz is a Nyquist frequency,
which means that the frequency between 0 and 7.5Hz can be
preserved.
- Thus, the 10Hz signal is missed.

Alias frequency = 5Hz

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Nyquist Frequency Less than Signal Frequency

Analog signal 10Hz, Sampling frequency 6Hz

- With 6 Hz sampling frequency, 3Hz is a Nyquist frequency, which means that
the frequency between 0 and 3Hz can be preserved.
- Thus, the 10Hz signal is missed.

Alias frequency = 2Hz

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 Nyquist Frequency (Worst Case)
Analog signal 10Hz, Sampling frequency 20Hz (Nyquist frequency is 20/2 = 10Hz)

Digital signal: 0 Hz
• Even with the sampling rate double to Nyquist frequency, the frequency information
can be lost.
• Some say that the minimum acceptabe sampling rate is 2.5 times greater than the
highest frequency of interest
• Thus, Nyquist frequency is just one of conditions to preserve the frequency
information
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 Nyquist Frequency

• Sampling frequency should be high as much as possible.

• The higher the sampling frequency, the closer a digital signal is to an analog
signal.

Why not very high sampling rate?

• Storage-limited • Takes a long for Signal processing
• Data transfer-limited

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 Alias Frequency
𝑘 𝐹 𝑠±
Alias frequencies: 𝑓

Power

Fs
Frequency
2Fs
Fs/2 Sampling Frequency
Nyquist
Frequency
Original frequency

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 Alias Frequency

Power

Fs
Frequency
Fs/2 Sampling Frequency
Nyquist
Frequency
Original frequency

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 Alias Frequency
𝑘 𝐹 𝑠±
Alias frequencies: 𝑓

Power

2Fs
Fs/2 Fs Frequency
Nyquist Frequency Sampling Frequency

f
Original frequency

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 Anti-aliasing Filter
• Suppose that you have a signal with frequency of 10Hz, and you decided to
choose sampling rate 80 Hz. But, every signal has a noise. Suppose that the
noise is 60Hz. Do we need to worry about the noise?

60Hz noise
… 0 ± 60 80 ± 60 … 20 Hz is appeared

10Hz signal
… 0 ± 10 80 ± 10 … Before sampling, we need to apply
low pass filter with cutoff
frequency of Fs/2
 Anti-aliasing filter

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END