Frequency Response

The questions below are due on Friday May 01, 2026; 05:00:00 PM.
 
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In lab today we're going to get some more practice with analyzing our circuits using the impedance method and interpreting the results of that analysis. We will use today's lab to get some hands-on experience with the ideas from the past couple of week's lectures (impedance and frequency response).

In particular, we're hoping that you'll come away from this lab with some practical experience with the skills we've been developing in class:

  • reading and understanding a Bode (gain vs. frequency) plot
  • understanding how the frequency-domain (Bode) plot contains information about time-domain plots
  • converting between dB and gain
  • using theory to design a filter to remove undesireable parts of a signal

1) Theory Warm-Up

We're going to start today by considering a familiar circuit:

Today we'll be doing a bunch of frequency analysis on circuits like these, but let's start by working out some theory. Answer the questions below to get started.

What is this circuit's time constant \tau, in terms of the circuit parameters?
Enter your answer as a Python expression below.

What is the ratio \frac{v_\text{out}(\omega)}{v_\text{in}(\omega)} in terms of the circuit parameters?
Enter your answer as a Python expression, using omega for \omega, j for j, R for R, and C for C.
HINT: Using the impedance method lets us treat this like a voltage divider!

What is the ratio \frac{v_\text{out}(\omega)}{v_\text{in}(\omega)} in terms of the time constant \tau?
Enter your answer as a Python expression, using omega for \omega, j for j, and tau for \tau.
HINT: Using the impedance method lets us treat this like a voltage divider!

As the frequency \omega approaches 0 (i.e., at low frequencies), what value does magnitude of the ratio \frac{v_\text{out}(\omega)}{v_\text{in}(\omega)} approach?

As the frequency \omega approaches \infty (i.e., at high frequencies), what value does magnitude of the ratio \frac{v_\text{out}(\omega)}{v_\text{in}(\omega)} approach?

Check Yourself 1:
What are the corresponding gains in dB at low and high frequencies?

What type of frequency response will this circuit exhibit?

At what value of \omega is the magnitude of the ratio \frac{v_\text{out}(\omega)}{v_\text{in}(\omega)} equal to 1\over \sqrt{2}?
Enter your answer in terms of tau (\tau).

What frequency f (measured in Hz) does that value of \omega correspond to?
Enter your answer as a symbolic expression in terms of tau (\tau) and pi (\pi).

At that frequency, what is the gain in dB?

At that frequency, what is the phase of ratio \frac{v_\text{out}(\omega)}{v_\text{in}(\omega)}, in degrees?

2) Getting Started

Before Building

Before building, let's reset the scope to all of its defaults by:

  • Pushing the "Default Setup" button in the upper left, and
  • Under the "Wave Gen" menu (accessible by pushing the button in the bottom right), click the "Settings" button (the bottom one on the screen), then click the "Default Wave Gen" button (the bottom one again) You should get a message on screen saying that things have been reset.

3) Really Getting Started

Get out your breadboard and get a few short wires. Grab a 3{\rm k}\Omega resistor and a 0.1{\rm \mu F} capacitor and build the circuit below:

The waveform generator from our scope will serve as V_{\rm sig} here, and we'll measure v_{in} using Channel 1 and v_{out} with Channel 2. Set up the wave generator with the following settings:

  • Sine Wave
  • 10 Hz
  • 1Vpp
  • 0V offset

While watching the amplitudes of the two signals, gradually increase the frequency of the sine wave up to maybe 100 kHz. Note you will need to periodically zoom in on the horizontal scale in order to keep being able to see the signal.

What do you notice as you increase the frequency?

What is the expected -3dB frequency (in Hz) of this RC circuit as predicted by theory?

Now, set the frequency to be this -3dB point you found earlier, and zoom things so you can clearly see channel 1 and channel 2 compared against each other. Measure the ratio of the amplitudes and eyeball the phase difference and make sure that they match your expected results from theory land.

Save this!

Take a photo of this measurement (including both channel 1 and channel 2) that clearly shows the amplitude ratio and phase offset and their associated labels! You will need both the photo and the measurements/results during checkoffs or later analysis.

Check Yourself 2:
How do these results compare against your theory work above?

4) Frequency Response

We would like to be able to characterize circuits' behaviors at a wide variety of frequencies (not just one). Given what we currently know, that would require us taking a whole bunch of measurements, changing the frequency of the wave gen manually, reading off some values, and then plotting them out like a chump. Thankfully our friendly neighborhood scopes give us a better way to characterize the behavior of the circuits, a "frequency response analysis".

4.1) An Example Frequency Response

The plots that come from the frequency response analysis (Bode plots) were discussed in lecture, and we'll use this lab as an opportunity to deepen our understanding of what these plots mean. Before you do a frequency sweep, let's give a preview of what you'll eventually get. Consider the example frequency response curve below (for a different circuit than the one above):

A Frequency Response Plot taken from a different circuit than the one you'll be analyzing. The blue plot is a plot of the gain (in dB) and the red is a plot of the phase in degrees. Note that the horizontal axis is on a log scale, but the labels are just the frequencies themselves.

Using the example plot above, answer the following questions:

At 10kHz, what is the approximate gain (in dB) of this circuit?

For the gain in dB you found above, what voltage ratio does this gain correspond to (in other words, what is \frac{v_{out}}{v_{in}}) at that frequency?

At 200kHz, what is the approximate gain (in dB) of this circuit?

For the approximate gain in dB you found in the previous question, what voltage ratio does this gain correspond to (in other words, what is \frac{v_{out}}{v_{in}} at that frequency?

At what approximate frequency (in Hz) is the magnitude of the output down by a factor of \frac{1}{\sqrt{2}} from its value at low (~0Hz) frequencies?

When the magnitude of the gain is down by a factor of \frac{1}{\sqrt{2}} what does that correspond to in dB?

At the frequency where the magnitude of the gain is down by a factor of \frac{1}{\sqrt{2}} (previous question), what is the phase difference between the output and input (in radians)?

4.2) On Your Circuit

Now that we've gotten some practice with reading a Bode plot, let's go ahead and generate one. We'll use the same circuit from before, but with different values than the ones used in the graph above:

With your circuit still the same and all your connections the same as before, go to Analyze >Features>Frequency Response Analysis. This should bring up a plot.

Then go to Setup and set:

  • Start Frequency at 10 Hz
  • Stop Frequency at 100 kHz
  • Amplitude at 1Vpp
  • Points at 120 (the number of frequencies to analyze)

Then, click "back" to get back to the main FRA menu and then click "run analysis". The screen will flash a bunch of sine waves as it sweeps 120 frequency points and analyzes the output over input ratio. When completed (after ~30 seconds), it'll give us a frequency response similar to what's shown above. The blue shows a plot of the magnitude (in dB) of \frac{v_{out}}{v_{in}} over frequency and the red is a plot of the phase (in degrees) of \frac{v_{out}}{v_{in}}. This should look very familiar based on the lectures this past week.

Using the "Entry" knob, identify what the -3dB point of your circuit is. Does it line up with your prediction from theory? Make sure it does! If not, ask for help!

Save this!

Take a photo of your circuit's frequency response, with the -3dB point clearly visible! You will need it during checkoffs or later analysis.

5) The Ol' Switcheroo

Now let's make a little change and see what happens. In particular, let's swap the resistor and the capacitor like so:

After this change, what is the ratio \frac{v_\text{out}(\omega)}{v_\text{in}(\omega)}? Use "omega" for \omega and "j" for j and numbers for everything else.

What type of frequency response will this circuit exhibit?

Run an identical sweep on this circuit using the settings you previously used. Study the result and what do you see?

For high frequencies (>10 kHz) what approximate value does the gain approach (in dB)?

For low frequencies (<100 Hz) what approximate value does the phase approach (in radians)?

For high frequencies (>10 kHz) what approximate value does the phase approach (in radians)?

What is the -3dB frequency for this circuit, in Hertz? How does it compare against the version when the components were swapped?

Check Yourself 3:
Using circuit theory, what should the -3dB frequency be in terms of R and C (or in terms of \tau) for this circuit? How does that compare against what you saw in the low-pass version?

Save this!

Take a photo of your circuit's frequency response! You will need it during checkoffs or later analysis.

Checkoff 1:

Discuss what you've seen so far in lab. Be prepared to discuss the frequency responses of all your circuits including showing snapshots.

  • What do we expect to happen in a Low-Pass Filter?
  • What do we expect to happen in a High-Pass Filter?
  • What are common features shared by both types of filters?
  • How does a capacitor act at low/high frequencies?
    • How do these ideas relate to the topologies we use for low-pass and high-pass filters with capacitors?
  • Explain your graphs of both sinusoids and frequency response analysis, and compare them against each other. What is the same and what is different?
  • Compare your graphs against the theory as well; how well does the theory predict the behavior we see?

6) Loop-de-loop

Alright, we've tested a capacitive circuit. Now let's try an inductor. Consider the RL circuit below:

What is the ratio \frac{v_{out}(\omega)}{v_{in}(\omega)}? Use omega, L, R, and j..

What type of frequency response will this circuit exhibit?

The inductors at the front of the room are 47{\rm mH} inductors. Let's try setting the cutoff frequency of this filter to be the same as the cutoff frequency of our original circuit. What value of R would we need to choose to make this happen? Enter your answer below, in Ohms:
R =~

Go ahead and grab one of those inductors (they're just a super-cute little pre-packaged coil of wire), as well as the closest resistor you can find to the value you wanted (we won't have exactly that value, but there should be something close), and use that to lay out this circuit on your board.

Make sure to use your new resistor value Then let's go ahead and run a frequency response on this one, using the same settings from before (what do you expect the output to look like, compared to the first frequency response we ran in this lab?):

  • Start Frequency at 10 Hz
  • Stop Frequency at 100 kHz
  • Amplitude at 1Vpp
  • Points at 120

Press Run Analysis and study your frequency response!

Save this!

Take a photo of your circuit's frequency response! You will need it during checkoffs or later analysis.

Check Yourself 4:
GASP! SHOCK! The frequency response probably doesn't look like what you would expect, given the theoretical calculations we made above.

What are the most noticeable differences from what the theory predicts the graph should look like?

Unfortunately, this is a limitation of the components we're using. That "inductor" we grabbed from the front of the room isn't actually a pure inductor ඞ; rather, we can think about it as an ideal inductor in series with a resistance (that comes from the long coil of wire making up the little inductor package):

Check Yourself 5:
Use a multimeter to measure the internal resistance of your inductor (after popping it out of the breadboard). What is this resistance, approximately?

How does this resistance explain (both qualitatively and quantitatively) the differences between the frequency response you expected and what you measured?

Checkoff 2:

Discuss the results of your experiments with the RL circuit. Be prepared to answer/discuss the following:

  • How do the frequency responses of the RC and LR circuit compare to each other in terms of theory?
  • Why was the frequency response of the LR circuit so different from the RC one, when the theory said they should be the same?
  • What was the internal resistance you measured for the inductor? How does that explain (both quantitatively and qualitatively) the differences between the frequency responses for the RC and RL versions of this circuit?
  • Why was the RC version so much closer to what the theory predicted? Why didn't it have the same problems as the RL version?

7) Second Order Filters

Alright, now let's try adding both an inductor and capacitor to the same filter. Build the following circuit, grabbing a new 120 \Omega resistor.

What is the ratio \frac{v_{out}(\omega)}{v_{in}(\omega)}? Use omega, L, R, C, and j.

What type of frequency response will this circuit exhibit?

What is the cross over frequency (in radians per second)? Hint: The cross over frequency is where two asympototes meet in the frequency response (similar to the cut off frequency in first-order systems). Use L, R, and C.

Then let's go ahead and run a frequency response on this one, using the same settings from before (what do you expect the output to look like, compared to the first frequency response we ran in this lab?):

  • Start Frequency at 10 Hz
  • Stop Frequency at 100 kHz
  • Amplitude at 1Vpp
  • Points at 120

Press Run Analysis and study your frequency response!

Save this!

Take a photo of your circuit's frequency response! You will need it during the checkoff.

Check Yourself 6:
Compare this result against the result from the original RC low-pass filter. What is similar between them? What is different? Pay specific attention to asymptotic behaviors.

Check Yourself 7:
One interesting feature is that the magnitude graph sometimes goes above zero. Specifically, at the crossover frequency (which happens at \omega = {1\over \sqrt{LC}}), the value of the magnitude is exactly Q (feel free to prove this to yourself algebraically).

What is the specific value of the magnitude at that point? Given that, is this RLC circuit underdamped, overdamped, or critically-damped?

Check Yourself 8:
Imagine that we had used this kind of circuit instead of the RC circuit for our bass-boost circuit last week. Qualitatively, what would have been different about the output sound?

Checkoff 3:
Discuss the results of your second order filter with a staff member. What changes in a second order filter? What is the slope of the gain? Where is the cross over frequency?