So for the receiver I am building I figured that some sort of filtering is going to be required in the audio stages. Not entirely sure yet on the final make up of things, but to start with I thought that I would design and evaluate a high pass filter to cut out the low frequencies as this is likely to be fixed weather i am receiving CW or SSB. Though for the low pass filter, i do want either variable bandwidth or select able widths. More on that later.

As with all filters more orders, more betters LOL. And so i jumped online to a calculator tool and quickly designed up a 3rd order Sallen-Key highpass with a cutoff of 350hz. The simulation looked reasonable so i then simulated it in LTSpice just to confirm things and check the OpAmp i had chosen was going to be ok.

Schematic of 3rd Order Sallen-Key Highpass Filter.

Simulation Bode Plot

Next the circuit was built on a solder-less breadboard, the OpAmp is an NE5532 and negative supply rail is an LM2662 Charge Pump. This gives the OpAmp plenty of room to swing when powered with + – 5v.

For the initial testing the OpAmp was fed with 1vpp 600hz sinewave.

 

Dumb people do dumb things and I spend 10mins wondering why I had 10x gain in a circuit that should have unity gain, then i noticed i had the scope probe on 1x not 10x where it usually lives. There is my 10x gain.

For final shits and gigles i busted out the bode plotter and swept the filter from 10hz to 5000hz to see just how it really looks, and other than a little noise down close to DC, which i think is just the frequency generator not liking being that low, the filter itself is pretty much as designed. -40db at 100hz should be good enough for the kinds of girls i go out with.

Next job will be to either add in a couple of low pass filters for typical CW and SSB filter widths or have a crack with switched capacitor lowpass filters and make it variable. Thats a job for another day.