High-Performance Amplifiers  

Table of Contents

Wideband Amplification

Multiple-Stage Response Characteristics 1

Amplifier Stage Gain Optimization 7

   Oscilloscope Vertical Amplifier Example 10

Poles Determined by Circuit Inspection   10

   Op-Amp Circuit Poles, C-G Method 13

BJT Amplifier Poles from the Cochrun-Grabel Method 15

   Cochrun-Grabel References 23

Inductive Peaking 24

   Series Peaking Example 27

   Shunt peaking 28

T-Coil Peaking 31

   T-Coil Compensation Example 36

Emitter Peaking 35

Bootstrap Speed-Up Circuit 36

Source-Follower Compensation 41

   CD Input Buffer Compensation 45

Emitter Compensation 47

Cascode Compensation of the CB Stage 54

   Cascode Dynamic Response Compensation 59

Compensation Circuit Synthesis 62

   Partial-Fraction Synthesis 66

   Continued-Fraction Synthesis 67

   Differentiator Example 68

Differential-Amplifier Compensation 69

Shunt-Feedback Amplifier Design 71

Shunt-Feedback Cascode & Darlington  Amplifiers 80

   CE with Load and Shunt-Feedback Capacitances 84

Closure 85

   References 86

 

Precision Amplification

 

Causes of Degradation in Precision   88

Intrinsic Noise   89

   Op-amp Input Noise 94

Extrinsic Noise: Radiation   98

Extrinsic Noise: Crosstalk   100

   Wiring and Layout Guidelines 103

Extrinsic Noise: Conductive Interference   106

   Shielded Cable Grounding with Attenuator 109

   Shield Effectiveness 110

   Power-Line Transformer Common-Mode Noise Rejection 111

   Power Distribution Noise 113

   Amplifier Bypass Paths 116

Differential-Input Amplifiers   118

One-Op-Amp Diff-Amp with Offset 120

Diff-Amp Calibration and Measurement 124

Effect of Resistor Tolerances on Diff-Amp Gains 127

Diff-Amp Common-Mode Rejection 131

Statistical Error Analysis 135

Diff-Amp Error Example 144

High-Side Current Sensing 149

Isolated Current Loops 154

High-Side Current-Sense Error Compensation 155

Cascaded Op-Amps 157

Two-Op-Amp Diff-Amps 159

Instrumentation Amplifiers   165

Gain-Switched Amplifiers 169

Guarding 172

Low-Level Amplification 176

Component Characteristics 178

Isolation Amplifiers 184

Linear Optocoupler Isolation Amplifier 187

   Input Amplifier Nonlinearity Compensation 188

   Iso-Amp Thermal Response 190

   Input-Side LOC Amplifier 193

Autocalibration 196

   Acquisition and Processing 197

   Two-Point Calibration 199

Autozeroing 201  

Distortion 202

   CE Harmonic Distortion 204

   CC Harmonic Distortion 206

BJT Diff-Pair Transconductance Linearity 208

BJT Diff-Pair Temperature Characteristics 212

JFET Diff-Pair Temperature Characteristics 218

Dynamic Thermal Distortion 222

   CS Buffer Thermal Compensation 231

Buffer Amplifier Design 233

   Offset Voltage 234

   Thermal Distortion 235

   Matched-BJT Buffer Amplifier 237

Complementary Emitter-Follower Output Amplifier 238

References 252

High-Performance Amplification

Current-Input & Feedback Amplifiers 254

Split-Path Amplifiers 263

   Split-Path Composite Trigger Amplifier 265

Low-Frequency Feedback Amplifiers 266

   Low-Frequency Feedback Input Buffer 272

Feedbeside Amplifiers 273

Feedforward Amplifiers 276

   Op-Amp Feedforward Amplifier 277

Feedforward Differential Cascode Amplifiers 278

a-Compensated Amplifiers 283

f_T Multipliers 287

Distributed Amplifiers 290

High-Performance Buffer Amplifiers 292

Unipolar Voltage-Translating Amplifiers 297

Bootstrapped Input Stages 302

Composite-Feedback & Large-Signal Dynamic Compensation 305

Translinear Circuits and Multiplier 310

Gain-Controlled Amplifiers 321

Closure 325

References 326