Section: Software and Platforms

RGC

Participant : Fabien Seyfert [corresponding participant] .

Status: A stable version is maintained.

This software is developed in collaboration with Jean-Paul Marmorat (Centre de mathématiques appliquées (CMA), École des Mines de Paris).

The identification of filters modeled by an electrical circuit that was developed by the team (see Section  4.5 ) led us to compute the electrical parameters of the underlying filter. This means finding a particular realization $(A,B,C,D)$ of the model given by the rational approximation step. This 4-tuple must satisfy constraints that come from the geometry of the equivalent electrical network and translate into some of the coefficients in $(A,B,C,D)$ being zero. Among the different geometries of coupling, there is one called “the arrow form” [57] which is of particular interest since it is unique for a given transfer function and is easily computed. The computation of this realization is the first step of RGC. Subsequently, if the target realization is not in arrow form, one can nevertheless show that it can be deduced from the arrow-form by a complex- orthogonal change of basis. In this case, RGC starts a local optimization procedure that reduces the distance between the arrow form and the target, using successive orthogonal transformations. This optimization problem on the group of orthogonal matrices is non-convex and has many local and global minima. In fact, there is not even uniqueness of the filter realization for a given geometry. Moreover, it is often relevant to know all solutions of the problem, because the designer is not even sure, in many cases, which one is being handled. The assumptions on the reciprocal influence of the resonant modes may not be equally well satisfied for all such solutions, hence some of them should be preferred for the design. Today, apart from the particular case where the arrow form is the desired form (this happens frequently up to degree 6) the RGC software provides no guarantee to obtain a single realization that satisfies the prescribed constraints. The software Dedale-HF (see Section  5.4 ), which is the successor of RGC, solves with guarantees this constraint realization problem.