Closed-Form Mixed Design of High-Accuracy All-Pass Variable Fractional-Delay Digital Filters

This paper presents a closed-form method for minimizing the weighted squared error of variable fractional-delay (VFD) of an all-pass VFD digital filter under an equality constraint on its normalized root-mean-squared (NRMS) error of variable frequency response (VFR). The main purpose is to reduce the squared VFD error as much as possible while keeping its NRMS VFR error exactly at a predetermined value. We first prove that the linearized VFR error of an all-pass VFD filter is almost the same as its linearized phase error, and then convert the equality-constrained weighted-least-squares (WLS) design into an unconstrained optimization problem through the minimization of a mixed error function that mixes the weighted squared VFD error and squared VFR error. To reduce the computational complexity, we derive a closed-form mixed error function by utilizing Taylor series expansions of trigonometric functions. Therefore, the error functions can be efficiently computed without discretizing the design parameters (frequency ω and VFD parameter p). The closed-form mixed error function not only reduces the computational complexity, but also speeds up the design process as well guarantees the optimality of the final solution. Furthermore, a two-point search (dichotomous search) scheme is proposed for finding the optimal range p ∈ [p_Min,p_Max] of the VFD parameter p, and then the subfilter orders are optimized under a given filter complexity constraint (the number of all-pass VFD filter coefficients). This two-stage optimization process utilizes the NRMS VFD error as an error criterion. Design examples and comparisons are given to demonstrate that the closed-form mixed WLS method yields low-complexity all-pass VFD filters with a high-accuracy VFD response but without noticeably degrading its frequency response.