Novel brick-wall filters based on the auditory system

A novel class of narrow band filters is presented that offers great rejection of out of band noise and a flat top at the peak. The filter is unconventional, as the output of such a filter is a series of spikes, like the action potential in the auditory nerve. The product of its time and frequency window is less than unity even using 100% output cutoff points. A bank of such filters has been used to compute a spectrogram like display that has no streaks as seen in conventional spectrograms. This model differs from Lyon's cochlea in several areas particularly energy management and damping factor requirements. Its Q factor depends on the signal intensity, and it produces acoustic cubic distortion products similar to the auditory system, however, it is basically linear with a very wide dynamic range and its dynamics can be analyzed using linear filter theory.