Transfer Function
As we cover in Chapter 6, the transfer function of a digital filter is defined as where is the z transform of the input signal , and is the z transform of the output signal . We may find from Eq.(3.1) by taking the z transform of both sides and solving for :
Some principles of this analysis are as follows:
- The z transform
is a linear operator which means, by definition,
- . That is, the z transform of a signal delayed by samples, , is . This is the shift theorem for z transforms, which can be immediately derived from the definition of the z transform, as shown in §6.3.
In matlab, difference-equation coefficients are specified as transfer-function coefficients (vectors B and A in Fig.3.9). This is why a minus sign is needed in Eq.(3.3).
Ok, so finding the transfer function is not too much work. Now, what can we do with it? There are two main avenues of analysis from here: (1) finding the frequency response by setting , and (2) factoring the transfer function to find the poles and zeros of the filter. One also uses the transfer function to generate different implementation forms such as cascade or parallel combinations of smaller filters to achieve the same overall filter. The following sections will illustrate these uses of the transfer function on the example filter of this chapter.
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Frequency Response
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