# Stability condition for an iir filter

I have been out of touch with DSP for a while. I was trying to refresh my basics and ended up with this doubt on IIR filter stability condition. I understood that for an iir filter to be stable, the poles should be inside the unit circle which was derived from its analog counterpart (i.e poles should be on Left hand of s plane). But then is there any extra condition that poles should be only real? Could it be complex also?

• If poles are only real you're limited to the horizontal axis on your unit circle. Of course you can have stable filters with complex poles, but if you want your output to be real you need your pole to be at least complex conjugate – Florent May 16 '18 at 6:56

I would like to point out that the region of convergence of the Z Transform may include the unit circle, and yet the system may be non causal (but stable). For example, consider the impulse response: $h[n] = -a^{n}u[-n-1]$, for $|a| > 1$, which corresponds to a system having a pole outside the unit circle, and yet it is a stable (although non-causal) system.