What is the purpose for using double stages of the low-pass filter as the firgure shown below and is there any improvement in filtering when using double stages of the low-pass filter? Thanks.
Two first-order stages have double the rolloff outside the passband (12dB/octave instead of 6dB/octave).
But the corner rolloff is very soft for two such stages in series so it's not often used in practice. It's much better to use an active two-pole filter (such as a Butterworth) where the feedback gives a sharper rolloff at the corner.