General Causal FIR Filters

The most general case--a TDL having a tap after every delay element--is the general causal Finite Impulse Response (FIR) filter, shown in Fig.2.22. It is restricted to be causal because the output may not depend on ``future'' inputs , , etc. The FIR filter is also called a transversal filter. FIR filters are described in greater detail in [449].

The difference equation for the th-order FIR filter in Fig.2.22 is, by inspection,

and the transfer function is

The STK class for implementing arbitrary direct-form FIR filters is called Fir. (There is also a class for IIR filters named Iir.) In Matlab and Octave, the built-in function filter is normally used.

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About the Author: Julius Orion Smith III
Julius Smith's background is in electrical engineering (BS Rice 1975, PhD Stanford 1983). He is presently Professor of Music and Associate Professor (by courtesy) of Electrical Engineering at Stanford's Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA), teaching courses and pursuing research related to signal processing applied to music and audio systems. See http://ccrma.stanford.edu/~jos/ for details.