Analog Wire

  • When designing with a digital-to-analog converter (DAC), you expect the output to move from one value to the next monotonically, but real circuits don’t always behave that way. It’s not uncommon to see overshooting or undershooting, quantified...
  • In Part 1 of this post, we looked at the theory involved in making a composite amplifier , but we had yet to replace the ideal amplifier with a real component. Here we will discuss the physical implementation of the second stage. A current feedback...
  • Our lives are surrounded by analog everywhere we go. That’s not news to the Analog Wire audience, but it may surprise some that in this age of digital electronics, analog technology is more pervasive and impactful than ever. In everything from power...
  • In “ Cable Equalization 101 - Automating your design ,” we saw how a spreadsheet like Excel can be used to generate an equalization design rather painlessly, and we obtained the design in Figure 1 below. Here, we will use simulation to make...
  • NTC thermistors and analog temperature sensors are two commonly used temperature sensing solutions that can be used for most electronic applications. Deciding which technology is the best fit for your application can be a difficult task. However, I’m...
  • In my last post, I discussed the string DAC architecture and its tendencies― if you missed it you can view that post here . This post will focus on two very similar architectures, the R-2R DAC and the MDAC. Recall that the big limitation of the string...
  • Sometimes it’s impossible to find an amplifier with the right input and output characteristics, but a signal chain approach described in my previous blog posts on high gain, high bandwidth works well. Although very high gain can be achieved, one...
  • Judging by the number of views on a post related to numerical cable equalization , on the High Speed E2E forum (more than 3,700 at last count!), I would guess that it’s a pretty interesting topic for many folks. Since TI is one of the leading manufacturers...
  • Would you agree that RS-485 has turned out to be one of the most versatile communication standards when it comes to industrial applications? It’s very reliable for long distance communication and very popular. In all the years that the RS-485 standard...
  • Have you ever wondered how engineers designed active filters before the birth of software? They were able to do it using nomographs - but before we talk about what these are, let’s refresh our memory a little bit on active filters. Magnitude...