Articles - Measurement

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 ...

The principle behind testing the impulse response of circuits is simple: hit them with a sharp pulse and see what happens. As usual, Wikipedia has an article detailing the process ( Ref. 1 ). This notes that the ideal pulse a unit impulse, or Dirac ...

The biggest problem with precision noise measurement is that the noise floor you’re trying to evaluate is frequently below the sensitivity of your measuring instruments. The dominant technique for gaging precision op-amp noise is to calculate ...

Sensors such as strain gages, RTDs (resistance temperature detectors), and thermistors produce a resistance that’s proportional to force or temperature. If you measure a sensor’s resistance, you can calculate the physical parameter. ...

From the early CRT-based tools to the latest multifunctional powerhouses, the venerable oscilloscope has long been a mainstay of electronic design. Able to graphically display a range of electronic circuit performance information as a ...

If you need a very pure sine wave in the audio range, the circuit in Figure 1 can help. It is a simple deal: A sine wave with a THD of 1% coming from a function generator that goes through a trackable low-pass filter, which attenuates the ...

When current pulses with a stable I HIGH /I LOW ratio modulate a semiconductor junction, the ensuing voltage difference (for example, ΔV BE for a bipolar transistor) is a linear function of the absolute (Kelvin) temperature, T. You can use ...

Nearly four decades ago (in his Designs for High Performance Voltage-to-Frequency Converters, Ref. 1 ), famed designer Jim Williams cataloged five fundamental techniques for voltage to frequency conversion. One of those five is reproduced in Figure ...

Designers charged with creating precision analog front ends and signal chains know that the performance of the voltage reference whether a discrete standalone device or one that’s embedded in a component such as the analog-to-digital ...

A common problem for digital potentiometers (DigiPots) is the effect of wiper resistance, which produces quite noticeable non-linearities of regulation at both ends of the resistance range. These effects also lead to an increased tempco in these ...