Low-pass filters realizable as all-pass sums: design via a new flat delay filter

This paper describes a new class of maximally flat low-pass recursive digital filters. The filters are realizable as a parallel sum of two all-pass filters, a structure for which low-complexity low-noise implementations exist. Note that, with the classical Butterworth filter of degree N which is retrieved as a special case, it is not possible to adjust the delay (or phase linearity). However, with the more general class of filters described in this paper, the adjustment of the delay becomes possible, and the tradeoff between the delay and the phase linearity can be chosen. The construction of these low-pass filters depends upon a new maximally flat delay all-pole filter, for which the degrees of flatness at /spl omega/=0 and /spl omega/=/spl pi/ are not necessarily equal. For the coefficients of this flat delay filter, an explicit solution is introduced, which also specializes to a previously known result.