After more than fifty years of continuous production in bipolar and fully half that in CMOS, there’s really neither room nor reason to question the value and versatility of the venerable 555 analog timer. But if it has any significant ...
In this Design Idea (DI), the classic Schmitt-trigger-based RC oscillator is “hacked” and analyzed using the simulation software QSPICE ( Ref. 1 ). You might reasonably ask why one would do this, given that countless such circuits ...
This project made me feel a kind of kinship with Diogenes, although I was searching for the item described in the title rather than for an honest man. Figure 1. “Diogenes Looking for an Honest Man,” a painting attributed to Johann ...
The Norton amplifier topology brings back the essence of analog design by using clever circuit techniques to deliver strong performance with minimal components. It is not about a brand name it’s about a timeless analog philosophy that ...
A Planet Analog article, “2N3904: Why use a 60-year-old transistor?” ( Ref. 1 ) by Bill Schweber, inspired some interest in this old transistor and how it’s commonly used, and if any uncommon uses might exist. Here’s one we ...
Injection locking [ 1 ] can not only improve oscillator frequency stability and phase noise, but act as a selective frequency divider as well [ 2 ], [ 3 ]. You can find sample setups of a simple two-transistor LC-based Peltz oscillator (Figure 1) ...
In Part 1, we saw how to make an oscillator whose pitch, as opposed to frequency, can be made proportional to a control voltage. In this second part, we’ll look at some alternative ways of arranging things for other possible applications. To ...
Typical circuit An ongoing project (or gadget) called for a means of generating an audio output to represent a varying voltage level. Ho hum: that sounds like a voltage-controlled oscillator. But this signal was bipolar, spanning peaks ranging from ...
In the first part of this DI ( Ref. 1 ), we saw how to gate an oscillator to generate well-behaved impulses. Now we find out how to extend that idea to producing well-behaved step functions, or nicely smoothed square waves. The ideal here is the ...
Often, one needs a simple low voltage sinusoidal oscillator with good amplitude and frequency stability and low harmonic distortion; here, the Peltz oscillator becomes a viable candidate. Please see the Peltz oscillator Analog Devices Wiki page ...