Ian Hickman - Analog Circuits Cookbook

Analog Circuits Cookbook

Second Edition

Ian Hickman

BSc (Hons), CEng, MIEE, MIEEE

Newnes

OXFORD AUCKLAND BOSTON JOHANNESBURG MELBOURNE NEW DELHI

Table of Contents

Cover image

Title page

Copyright page

Preface to second edition

1: Advanced circuit techniques, components and concepts

Negative approach to positive thinking

Negative inductor

Real pictures

Negative capacitance

Kundert filter

Acknowledgements

Logamps for radar and much more

Acknowledgements

Working with avalanche transistors

Filters using frequency-dependent negative resistance

So how does an FDNR work?

Big surprises in small packages

Discrete active devices

2: Audio

Low distortion audio frequency oscillators

Notes on free phasing

Creating other tone colours

Music in mind

Filter variations

Some other filter types

Camcorder dubber

3: Measurements (audio and video)

Four opamp inputs are better than two

DC accurate filter plays anti-alias role

Bootstrap base to bridge building

Mighty filter power in minuscule packages

Introduction

Some active probes

Acknowledgements

4: Measurements (rf)

Measuring detectors (Part 1)

Measuring detectors (Part 2)

Measuring L and C at frequency on a budget

Add on a spectrum analyser

Wideband isolator

5: Opto

Sensing the position

Acknowledgements

Bringing the optoisolator into line

Acknowledgements

Light update

A look at light

6: Power supplies and devices

Battery-powered instruments

Acknowledgements

The MOS controlled thyristor

Designers power supply

7: RF circuits and techniques

Homodyne reception of FM signals

FSK and the homodyne

FM reception

Homodyne in practice

LTPs and active double balanced mixers

Acknowledgements

Low power radio links

Noise

Noise the basics

Thermal noise model

Characteristics of random noise

Other types of noise

Narrowband noise

The noisy signal

Stationary, or not?

Carrier noise

Is it noise?

Understanding phase noise

Introduction

Noise in the receiver

Why phase noise is important

Phase noise of the LO

To B or not to B(ottom)?

The frequency discriminator

Frequency discriminator sensitivity

The measured results

Conclusions

Index

Copyright

Newnes

An imprint of Butterworth-Heinemann

Linacre House, Jordan Hill, Oxford OX2 8DP

Wildwood Avenue, Woburn, MA 0180[-2041

A division of Reed Educational and Professional Publishing Ltd

A member of the Reed Elsevier plc group

First published 1995

Second edition 1999

Ian Hickman 1995, 1999

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any material form (including photocopying or storing in any medium by electronic means and whether or not transiently or incidentally to some other use of this publication) without the written permission of the copyright holder except in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 or under the terms of a licence issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency Ltd, Tottenham Court Road, London, England WIP 9HE. Applications for the copyright holders written permission to reproduce any part of this publication should be addressed to the publishers

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 7506 42343

Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

Typeset by Tek-Art, Croydon, Surrey

Printed and bound in Great Britain by

BiddIes Ltd, Guildford and Kings Lynn

Preface to second edition

Electronics World is undoubtedly the foremost electronics magazine in the UK, being widely read by both professional electronics engineers on the one hand and electronics hobbyists and enthusiasts on the other, in the UK, abroad and indeed around the world. The first article of mine to feature in the magazine, then called simply Wireless World, appeared back in the very early 1970s. Or was it the late 1960s; I cant remember. Since then I have become a more frequent and latterly a regular contributor, with both the Design Brief feature and occasional longer articles and series. With their straightforward non-mathematical approach to explaining modern electronic circuit design, component applications and techniques, these have created some interest and the suggestion that a collection of them might appear in book form found general approval among some of my peers in the profession. The first edition of this book was the result. A sequel, Hickmans Analog and R.F. Circuits, containing a further selection of articles published in Electronics World (as it is now known), was published subsequently.

Since the appearance of the first edition of the Analog Circuits Cookbook in 1995, a lot of water has flowed under the bridge, in technical terms. Some of the articles it contains are thus no longer so up-to-the-minute, whilst others are still entirely relevant and very well worth retaining. So this second edition of the Analog Circuits Cookbook has been prepared, retaining roughly half of the articles which appeared in the first edition, and replacing the rest with other articles which have appeared more recently in Electronics World.

Negative approach to positive thinking

Negative components

Negative components may not be called for every day, but can be extremely useful in certain circumstances. They can be easily simulated with passive components plus opamps and one should be aware of the possibilities they offer.

There is often felt to be something odd about negative components, such as negative resistance or inductance, an arcane aura setting them apart from the real world of practical circuit design. The circuit designer in the development labs of a large firm can go along to stores and draw a dozen k resistors or half a dozen 10 F tantalums for example, but however handy it would be, it is not possible to go and draw a 4.7 k resistor. Yet negative resistors would be so useful in a number of applications; for example when using mismatch pads to bridge the interfaces between two systems with different characteristic impedances. Even when the difference is not very great, for example testing a bandpass filter using a network analyser, the loss associated with each pad is round 6 dB, immediately cutting 12 dB off how far down you can measure in the stopband. With a few negative resistors in the junk box, you could make a pair of mismatch pads with 0 dB insertion loss each.