Analog Circuit Design: A Tutorial Guide to Applications and Solutions

Analog circuit and system design today is more essential than ever before. With the growth of digital systems, wireless communications, complex industrial and automotive systems, designers are challenged to develop sophisticated analog solutions. This comprehensive source book of circuit design solutions will aid systems designers with elegant and practical design techniques that focus on common circuit design challenges. The book’s in-depth application examples provide insight into circuit design and application solutions that you can apply in today’s demanding designs.

• Covers the fundamentals of linear/analog circuit and system design to guide engineers with their design challenges
• Based on the Application Notes of Linear Technology, the foremost designer of high performance analog products, readers will gain practical insights into design techniques and practice
• Broad range of topics, including power management tutorials, switching regulator design, linear regulator design, data conversion, signal conditioning, and high frequency/RF design
• Contributors include the leading lights in analog design, Robert Dobkin, Jim Williams and Carl Nelson, among others

Dear Amazon Readers,

The fundamental difference between analog and digital is ‘‘information.’’ With digital information the output is always the same: a set of ones and zeros that represents the information. This information is independent of the supply voltages or the circuitry that is used to generate it. With analog, the output information is basic electrical values–volts, current, charge–and is always related to some real world parameters. With analog, the methodology used to arrive at the answers is intrinsic to the quality of those answers. Errors such as temperature, noise, delay and time stability can all affect the analog output and all are a function of the circuitry that generates the output. It is this analog output that is difficult to derive and requires experience and circuit design talent. With integrated circuits (ICs) so prevalent, combined with application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) in most systems, it is becoming increasingly difficult to find good analog examples for teaching engineers analog design. Engineering schools provide the basics of device terminal characteristics and some circuit hookup information, but this is not adequate for designing finished circuits or applying modern IC design techniques. The analog circuitry in today’s systems is often difficult to decipher without help from the original designer. The ability to design complex analog systems relies on the ability of engineers to learn from what has gone before. One of the best avenues for learning analog design is to use the application notes and information from companies who supply analog integrated circuits. These application notes include circuitry, test results, and the basic reasoning for some of the choices made in the design of these analog circuits. They provide a good starting point for new designs. Since the applications are aimed at solving problems, the application notes, combined with the capability to simulate circuits on Spice, provide a key learning pathway for engineers. The analog information in most of these application notes is timeless and will be as valid twenty years from now as it is today. It’s my hope that anyone reading this book is helped through the science and art of good analog design.Read an excerpt from Analog Circuit Design.

Robert Dobkin
Co-Founder, Vice President, Engineering, and Chief Technical Officer
Linear Technology Corporation

Table of Contents

Part 1: Power Management

Section 1. Power Management Tutorials
Chapter 1. Ceramic Input Capacitors Can Cause Overvoltage Transients
Chapter 2. Minimizing Switching Regulator Residue In Linear Regulator Outputs: Banishing Those Accursed Spikes
Chapter 3. Power Conditioning For Notebook And Palmtop Systems
Chapter 4. 2-Wire Virtual Remote Sensing For Voltage Regulators: Clairvoyance Marries Remote Sensing

Section 2. Switching Regulator Design
Chapter 5. Lt1070 Design Manual
Chapter 6. Switching Regulators For Poets: A Gentle Guide For The Trepidatious
Chapter 7. Step-Down Switching Regulators
Chapter 8. A Monolithic Switching Regulator With 100Μv Output Noise: “Silence Is The Perfectest Herald Of Joy …”
Chapter 9. Powering Complex Fpga-Based Systems Using Highly Integrated Dc/Dc Μmodule Regulator Systems: Part 1 Of 2 Circuit And Electrical Performance
Chapter 10. Powering Complex Fpga-Based Systems Using Highly Integrated Dc/Dc µmodule Regulator Systems: Part 2 Of 2 Thermal Performance And Layout
Chapter 11. Diode Turn-On Time Induced Failures In Switching Regulators: Never Has So Much Trouble Been Had By So Many With So Few Terminals

Section 3. Linear Regulator Design
Chapter 12. Performance Verification Of Low Noise, Low Dropout Regulators: Silence Of The Amps

Section 4. High Voltage and High Current Applications
Chapter 13. Parasitic Capacitance Effects In Step-Up Transformer Design
Chapter 14. High Efficiency, High Density, Polyphase Converters For High Current Applications

Section 5. Powering Lasers and Illumination Devices
Chapter 15. Ultracompact Lcd Backlight Inverters: A Svelte Beast Cuts High Voltage Down To Size
Chapter 16. A Thermoelectric Cooler Temperature Controller For Fiber Optic Lasers: Climatic Pampering For Temperamental Lasers
Chapter 17. Current Sources For Fiber Optic Lasers: A Compendium Of Pleasant Current Events
Chapter 18. Bias Voltage And Current Sense Circuits For Avalanche Photodiodes: Feeding And Reading The Apd

Section 6. Automotive and Industrial Power Design
Chapter 19. Developments In Battery Stack Voltage Measurement: A Simple Solution To A Not So Simple Problem

Part 2: Data conversion, signal conditioning and high frequency/RF

Section 1. Data Conversion
Chapter 20. Some Techniques For Direct Digitization Of Transducer Outputs
Chapter 21. The Care And Feeding Of High Performance Adcs: Get All The Bits You Paid For
Chapter 22. A Standards Lab Grade 20-Bit Dac With 0.1Ppm/°C Drift: The Dedicated Art Of Digitizing One Part Per Million
Chapter 23. Delta Sigma Adc Bridge Measurement Techniques
Chapter 24. 1Ppm Settling Time Measurement For A Monolithic 18-Bit Dac: When Does The Last Angel Stop Dancing On A Speeding Pinhead?

Section 2. Signal Conditioning
Chapter 25. Applications For A Switched-Capacitor Instrumentation Building Block
Chapter 26. Application Considerations And Circuits For A New Chopper-Stabilized Op Amp
Chapter 27. Designing Linear Circuits For 5V Single Supply Operation
Chapter 28. Application Considerations For An Instrumentation Lowpass Filter
Chapter 29. Micropower Circuits For Signal Conditioning
Chapter 30. Thermocouple Measurement
Chapter 31. Take The Mystery Out Of The Switched-Capacitor Filter: The System Designer’S Filter Compendium
Chapter 32. Bridge Circuits: Marrying Gain And Balance
Chapter 33. High Speed Amplifier Techniques: A Designer’S Companion For Wideband Circuitry
Chapter 34. A Seven-Nanosecond Comparator For Single Supply Operation: Guidance For Putting Civilized Speed To Work
Chapter 35. Understanding And Applying Voltage References
Chapter 36. Instrumentation Applications For A Monolithic Oscillator: A Clock For All Reasons
Chapter 37. Slew Rate Verification For Wideband Amplifiers: The Taming Of The Slew
Chapter 38. Instrumentation Circuitry Using Rms-To-Dc Converters: Rms Converters Rectify Average Results
Chapter 39. 775 Nanovolt Noise Measurement For A Low Noise Voltage Reference: Quantifying Silence

Section 3. High Frequency/RF Design
Chapter 40. Lt5528 Wcdma Acpr, Altcpr And Noise Measurements
Chapter 41. Measuring Phase And Delay Errors Accurately In I/Q Modulators