Nonlinear Performance on Acoustic Transversal Filters

The recently proposed transversal topology for creating acoustic filters allows to achieve arbitrary filter responses, in terms of position of transmission zeros and bandwidth, among others. This new topology might indeed help to give response to the demanding filter specification of the recent and future wireless communication systems, some not yet achievable with the conventional ladder configuration used in acoustic technology. Full success of the transversal configuration to this end also requires meeting decent nonlinear responses. This work makes use of a comprehensive nonlinear equivalent circuit model to analyze and evaluate the nonlinear response, in particular the second harmonic (H2), of acoustic transversal filters. This work evaluates the effects of the filter bandwidth, electro-acoustic coupling and goes one step further to propose variation of the topology to provide filter responses with reduced nonlinear effects.