This is a guided problem to help you with first order filters.

        There are some fundamental behaviors of filters that you need to get familiar with.  In this interactive problem you will examine the effects of a first order filter on noise.  Click here for the filter simulator.

P1  Start the filter simulator.  The default values in the filter simulator are:

• The time constant is 0.25 seconds.
• The input noise amplitude is 0.5.  The noise in this simulator will be uniformly distributed from -0.5 to +0.5 when the noise amplitude is set to 0.5.
• The filter DC gain is set to 1.0.

• Run the simulator three times.
• Note, the simulator uses random signals, so the results will not be the same every time.
• Change the time constant, increasing it to 0.5 seconds.  Run the simulator again (3 times) and note the tendency for the size of the output to decrease as evidenced by the reduction in variance and your visual observation of the size of the output.