Smoothing circuit

In devices such as DC stabilized power supplies, the process of generating a stable DC voltage from a commercial power source begins with converting the input voltage into a unidirectional DC voltage, such as full-wave rectified AC, using a diode in a rectifier circuit. However, at this stage, the output is a pulsating current and the voltage level is not stable. Therefore, the rectifier circuit removes the AC components contained in the pulsating current to average and stabilize it. In other words, the smoothing circuit acts as a low-pass filter that removes low-frequency components, which are integer multiples of the commercial power supply frequency, contained in the pulsating current.