Because they use practically no bias current (a useful feature in itself), JFETs also have practically no current noise. This feature means that you can use JFETs in very-high-resistance circuits and obtain good noise performance. JFETs are also ...
In a water-cooled power converter, analog-output sensors measure the cooling water temperature at three locations. If any of the three temperatures rises above a preset threshold, an alarm sounds and attracts the attention of the system's ...
Signals ranging from music to complex control-system waveforms may contain unequal positive and negative peak amplitudes. An envelope-follower circuit can track unequal peaks, but the ability to select a desired peak can enhance the circuit's ...
When using an optocoupler in a linear application, you should consider its gain drift with temperature. Traditional single- and dual-transistor-output devices have a notable gain drift with temperature. In recent years, some temperature-compensated ...
When you need to compare the dc level of a noisy signal with a reference for further processing, the output of the comparator changes in a chaotic way when the dc level approaches that of the reference. You have a choice of two classic solutions to ...
The easy way to clamp a signal to a given value is to use two zener diodes, connected back-to-back. This method has several disadvantages. The accuracy of the clamping depends on the tolerance of the zener diodes, and the clamping is not ...
P-channel MOSFETs can simplify designs when you use them as high-side switches on circuits with voltages exceeding 100 V dc. When driving a MOSFET, you must rapidly charge and discharge the input capacitance between its gate and its source to ...
A designer who uses a phototransistor to convert a modulated optical signal to an electrical signal frequently encounters problems when high-intensity background light saturates the phototransistor. When its base terminal floats, a ...
Although the prevailing number set in electronics is binary, human-machine interaction uses a decimal-number set. For this reason, designs often require the use of amplifiers with gain programmable in steps in the power of 10. Currently, Analog ...
EDN Test equipment for a production line should be user-friendly (read “idiot-proof”) and should offer minimal test time. In many cases, the test fixture must give an operator only one answer: pass or fail. Usually, two indicators ...