Kautz filter

In signal processing, the Kautz filter, named after William H. Kautz, is a fixed-pole traversal filter, published in 1954.

Like Laguerre filters, Kautz filters can be implemented using a cascade of all-pass filters, with a one-pole lowpass filter at each tap between the all-pass sections.

Orthogonal set

Given a set of real poles $\{-\alpha _{1},-\alpha _{2},\ldots ,-\alpha _{n}\}$, the Laplace transform of the Kautz orthonormal basis is defined as the product of a one-pole lowpass factor with an increasing-order allpass factor:

$\Phi _{1}(s)={\frac {\sqrt {2\alpha _{1}}}{(s+\alpha _{1})}}$

$\Phi _{2}(s)={\frac {\sqrt {2\alpha _{2}}}{(s+\alpha _{2})}}\cdot {\frac {(s-\alpha _{1})}{(s+\alpha _{1})}}$

$\Phi _{n}(s)={\frac {\sqrt {2\alpha _{n}}}{(s+\alpha _{n})}}\cdot {\frac {(s-\alpha _{1})(s-\alpha _{2})\cdots (s-\alpha _{n-1})}{(s+\alpha _{1})(s+\alpha _{2})\cdots (s+\alpha _{n-1})}}$.

In the time domain, this is equivalent to

$\phi _{n}(t)=a_{n1}e^{-\alpha _{1}t}+a_{n2}e^{-\alpha _{2}t}+\cdots +a_{nn}e^{-\alpha _{n}t}$,

where a_ni are the coefficients of the partial fraction expansion as,

$\Phi _{n}(s)=\sum _{i=1}^{n}{\frac {a_{ni}}{s+\alpha _{i}}}$

For discrete-time Kautz filters, the same formulas are used, with z in place of s.

Relation to Laguerre polynomials

If all poles coincide at s = -a, then Kautz series can be written as,
$\phi _{k}(t)={\sqrt {2a}}(-1)^{k-1}e^{-at}L_{k-1}(2at)$,
where L_k denotes Laguerre polynomials.

See also

• Kautz code