IEEE SIGNAL PROCESSING LETTERS, VOL. 21, NO.

12, DECEMBER 2014 1511

A New Class of Low Complexity Low-Pass

Multiplierless Linear-Phase Special CIC FIR Filters
Dejan N. Milić, Member, IEEE, and Vlastimir D. Pavlović

Abstract—This letter presents a new class of selective low-pass

multiplierless linear-phase special CIC FIR filter functions of low
complexity given in an explicit cascaded compact form. Several ex-
amples of the proposed filters are illustrated. They are compared in
a fair way with conventional CIC FIR filters for the equal values
of group delay and the same number of cascade sections. An ex-
ample of the new class of the proposed seventh order filter with
nine cascades is presented, where its stopband attenuation has high
value of 143.82 dB, while corresponding conventional CIC FIR
filter with the same filter order and the number of cascades has
only 115.18 dB.
Index Terms—Comb filters, FIR filters, linear-phase, multiplier-
less, selective CIC filter functions.

I. INTRODUCTION

M ULTIPLIERLESS linear-phase digital filters are very

important in many practical applications including mul-
tirate filtering in wireless receivers. These filters are presented
in the literature [1]–[11]. Cascaded Integrator-Comb (CIC) fil-
ters are first proposed in [1], and some of their recent uses are
described in the references [4]–[9]. CIC FIR filter functions rep-
resent a basis for this research.
This letter presents a generalization in the area of low-pass
multiplierless linear-phase classical CIC FIR filter functions.
Using the generalization, improved filter features are obtained. Fig. 1. Locations and multiplicities of filter function zeros in -plane for
A new class of special low complexity low-pass selective , and cascades (a) Classical CIC filter, (b) Proposed
filter, (c) Classical CIC filter, (d) Proposed filter, .
multiplierless linear-phase CIC FIR filters generated by spe-
cific synthesis of comb filter functions of non-identical order
connected in cascade is proposed here. The new class has three where is a free integer parameter ( is the number of coef-
integer parameters: , , and , but also the same value of ficients of finite impulse response, that is, ( ) is the filter
group delay and number of cascades as the corresponding clas- order). Conventional CIC FIR filters are well known in literature
sical CIC filters. Adequate examples of the proposed filter func- [1], [4]–[11]. Causal low-pass CIC FIR filter functions, repre-
tions are illustrated. sented in the domain, are defined as:

II. MULTIPLIERLESS LINEAR-PHASE CIC 1D FIR (2)

FILTER FUNCTIONS
The normalized comb FIR filter function, in its non–recursive
and recursive form, respectively, is defined as:
(1)
Manuscript received April 09, 2014; revised June 12, 2014; accepted July
15, 2014. Date of publication July 25, 2014; date of current version August 01,
2014. This work was supported in part by the Ministry of Education, Science and
Technological Development of the Republic of Serbia under Grants TR32023
and III44006. The associate editor coordinating the review of this manuscript
and approving it for publication was Prof. Xiao-Ping Zhang.
The authors are with Faculty of Electronic Engineering, University of Nis,
18000 Nis, Republic of Serbia (e-mail: dejan.milic@elfak.ni.ac.rs; vlastimir.
pavlovic@elfak.ni.ac.rs).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/LSP.2014.2343212
where is the number of identical cascaded comb filter sec-
tions in classical CIC filter in [10], [11]. The main goal of this
letter is further generalization of comb filter applications in CIC
configuration, yielding better frequency response characteristics
for the same CIC FIR filter complexity, and increased attenua-
tion in the stopband region, as well as better selectivity in the
transition region, for the same number of cascade sections ,
and the same value of group delay.
III. PROPOSED NEW CLASS OF SPECIAL LOW-PASS SELECTIVE
MULTIPLIERLESS LINEAR PHASE CIC FIR FILTER FUNCTIONS
This letter proposes a FIR filter function in the form of
cascade-connected sections, determined by the product of five
successive comb filter functions as , ,
, and . Causal non–recursive

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1512 IEEE SIGNAL PROCESSING LETTERS, VOL. 21, NO. 12, DECEMBER 2014

Fig. 3. Comparison of normalized magnitude response characteristics in dB of

classical CIC filter for (dashed lines), and the proposed CIC FIR filter
class functions for (solid lines) (a) (dashed line), ,
Fig. 2. Normalized response characteristic of the proposed CIC FIR filter class (solid line) (b) (dashed line), , (solid line) (c)
for , and (a) Amplitude response characteristics (dashed line), , (solid line).
(b) Magnitude response characteristics.

and recursive low-pass CIC FIR filter functions are given in

explicit form as:

(3)

and

Fig. 4. Comparison between normalized amplitude response characteristics of

filter functions (dashed lines: classical CIC FIR filter for and
), (solid lines: proposed class of CIC filter functions for ,
, ) in lower part of frequency range (a) Am-
plitude response characteristics (b) Amplitude response characteristics at low
(4) frequencies range where attenuation is less than 0.28 dB.
MILIĆ AND PAVLOVIĆ: LOW-PASS MULTIPLIERLESS LINEAR-PHASE SPECIAL CIC FIR FILTERS 1513

TABLE I
CHARACTERISTICS OF CLASSICAL CIC FILTERS FOR
AND

TABLE II
CHARACTERISTICS OF THE PROPOSED FILTER CLASS FOR ,
AND

Fig. 6. Passband and stopband cut-off values of the proposed filter class, for
different and (a) Passband cut-off values (b) Stopband cut-off values.

Fig. 7. Stopband attenuation improvement of the proposed filter class over cor-
Fig. 5. Contour plots of magnitude response characteristic for classical and responding classical CIC filters with equal group delays.
proposed CIC FIR filters for , and (a) Classical CIC
filter with (b) Proposed filter, , .
. Linear phase re-
sponse characteristic of the proposed new class of spe-
where is an integer parameter. Overall number of cascades is cial CIC FIR filter functions has the following form:
. General form of frequency response characteristic , where
of the proposed class of CIC FIR filter functions is given by: . Group delay of the proposed filter class is
constant, and expressed as:
(7)

IV. NUMERICAL RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

(5)
where is the angular frequency. General form of the
normalized amplitude response characteristic of the proposed
class of CIC FIR filter functions is given by:
(6)
and magnitude response characteristic is obtained as the
absolute value of normalized amplitude characteristic,
We first investigate the locations of zeros in the proposed filter
design, in comparison to the classical CIC filter zeros. As the
number of cascades in classical CIC filter increases, the mul-
tiplicities of the zeros increase accordingly. However, higher
stopband attenuation between the zeros can be achieved by a
filter that have zeros which are more evenly distributed, with
their multiplicities therefore reduced. Comparison of locations
and multiplicities of zeros is shown in Fig. 1, for
and the total number of cascades . Clearly, the zeros of
the proposed filter are more evenly distributed, and this is true
for even, as well as for odd filter orders.
In Fig. 2, we show amplitude and magnitude response char-
acteristics in frequency domain as a function of filter order, for
total number of cascades . Obviously, with the increase
in filter order the passband becomes narrower, as is expected.
The number of transfer function zeros is increased and this is
clearly visible in branching of high loss regions in magnitude
1514
response characteristics, especially for lower filter orders and
towards higher frequencies.
We further put the stopband attenuation into perspective with
stopband attenuation of classical CIC filters of the same com-
plexity, and this is shown in Fig. 3, for total number of cas-
cades . It is obvious that the stopband atten-
uation characteristics of the proposed filters are better than that
of the classical CIC filter. The passband is also slightly nar-
rower, which is the consequence of the two zeros which fall
below the frequency location of the first zero in the classical
CIC filter. This is also visible in amplitude response charac-
teristics which are shown in Fig. 4. Comparison between the
proposed filter class and the classical CIC filters is summarized
in Tables I and II. Relative difference of passband cut–off fre-
quencies of the classical and the proposed filter class,
is only 1.53% for , 1.69% for
and 1.73% for . From these examples, we conclude
that the passband is only marginally affected by the proposed
changes in filter function.
Following the non–recursive form considered in [10], [11],
our filter function can be expressed using integer coefficients,
and we have for , (see (8) at the top of the page),
where operator denotes the scalar product of the two vectors.
Another example for and gives (9), shown at the
top of the page.
Fig. 5 compares magnitude responses of proposed filter class
and corresponding classical CIC filters, for different filter or-
ders. As the filter order increases, the benefits of the proposed
filter class become less apparent, and the magnitude response
characteristics closely resemble that of the classical CIC fil-
ters. Therefore, we conclude that the proposed filter class is
IEEE SIGNAL PROCESSING LETTERS, VOL. 21, NO. 12, DECEMBER 2014
(8)
(9)
efficient for enhancing stopband attenuation characteristics of
lower order filters, with less than about 15.
Fig. 6 shows passband and stopband cut–off frequencies
versus for different values of . Graphical representation in
Fig. 6 can be used during filter design for choosing the appro-
priate parameters, and (and consequently: ),
capable of meeting a given set of specifications.
Stopband attenuation improvement of the proposed filter
class over corresponding classical CIC filters with equal group
delays is shown in Fig. 7. For we see sharp
increase in stopband attenuation, which potentially allows
fewer cascades in order to achieve stopband requirements.
V. CONCLUSION
In this letter, a new class of special low complexity low-pass
selective multiplierless linear-phase CIC FIR filter functions
given in an explicit compact form is presented with three in-
teger parameters: , , and . The functions are obtained by
cascade connecting non-identical comb filter sections. The
characteristics of the proposed non-classical special CIC FIR
filter for the given values of integer parameters are illustrated.
Well-known conventional CIC filter is compared in a fair way
with the proposed class of CIC FIR filters for the same number
of cascaded stages and for the same constant value of group
delay characteristics. It is demonstrated that the proposed filters
have significant improvement of attenuation in the stopband.
In addition, the filters can successfully replace popular con-
ventional CIC filters in many applications such as audio appli-
cations, for example. The proposed multiplierless CIC FIR filter
is also applicable in real-time applications [8].
MILIĆ AND PAVLOVIĆ: LOW-PASS MULTIPLIERLESS LINEAR-PHASE SPECIAL CIC FIR FILTERS
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