A Comparison of Integration and Low-Pass Filtering

A comparison of the ideal integrator and low-pass filters has been made. Many experimenters use an integrator to filter out high-frequency noise from their data, whereas a properly designed low-pass filter will remove more noise and distort the signal less. Viewed as a low-pass filter, the integrator is superior to the RC filter but inferior to higher order filters. An integrating digital voltmeter (DVM) integrates and samples the input signal. If the signal has a varying component and is mixed with noise, it would be more accurate to use a low-pass filter followed by a sampler, than the integrating DVM.