Design and Investigation of a programmable FIR-Filter for Clock Frequencies up to 1 GHz

An FIR-filter for the UHF-range has been developed and investigated. The filter consists of an analog and a digital section and is integrated as a chip using GaAs MESFET technology. The advantages of this design are that the filter characteristic can be programmed and changed electronically and the chips can be cascaded to obtain higher filter orders. Fully operational chips have been tested with a clock frequency up to 1 GHz. Sensitivity analyses using numerical investigations have been performed to determine the effects of non-idealities of the circuit on important filter parameters.