Decimation filters for high-speed delta-sigma modulators with passband constraints: General versus CIC-based FIR filters

For high-speed delta-sigma modulators the decimation filters are typically polyphase FIR filters as the recursive CIC filters can not be implemented because of the iteration period bound. In addition, the high clock frequency and short input word length make multiple constant multiplication techniques less beneficial. Instead a realistic complexity measure in this setting is the number of non-zero digits of the FIR filter tap coefficients. As there is limited control of the passband approximation error for CIC-based filters these must in most cases be compensated to meet a passband specification. In this work we investigate the complexity of decimation filters meeting CIC-like stopband behavior, but with a well defined passband approximation error. It is found that the general approach can in many cases produce filters with much smaller passband approximation error at a similar complexity.