Compensating for Parasitic Effects in Low-Pass Filters

Techniques to compensate for the effects of parasitic inductances and capacitances have been developed as part of an effort to improve the performances of low-pass filters in electronic power circuits. As used here, “parasitic” refers to departure from an ideal inductive or capacitive characteristic. No inductor, capacitor, or other electronic component is ideal: wherever a current loop exists, there is inductance, and wherever two conductors are near each other, there is a capacitance between them. Parasitic capacitances in inductors and parasitic inductances in capacitors degrade the performances of low-pass filters, especially at high frequencies.