A 60–90 MHz cochlear-based channelizer

This paper presents a 7-channel channelizer based on the mammalian cochlea. The cochlea is an amazing channelizing filter, covering three decades of bandwidth with over 3,000 channels in a very small physical space. Using a simplified mechanical cochlear model and its electrical analogue, a design method is demonstrated for RF and microwave channelizers that retains the desirable features of the cochlea including the ability to cascade a large number of channels (for multiple-octave frequency coverage), and a high-order stop-band rejection. The channelizer is successfully demonstrated using both the top-C coupled and tubular filter topologies. Application areas include wide band, contiguous-channel receivers for signal intelligence or spectral analysis.