Once relegated to the hinterlands of low cost indicatorlights, the LED is again in the spotlight of the lightingworld. LED lighting is now ubiquitous, from car headlightsto USB-powered lava lamps. Car headlights exemplifyapplications that capitalize on the LED’s clear advantages—unwavering high quality light output, tough-assteelrobustness, inherent high effi ciency—while a USBlava lamp exemplifi es applications where only LEDs work.Despite these clear advantages, their requirement forregulated voltage and current make LED driver circuitsmore complex than the venerable light bulb, but some newdevices are closing the gap. For instance, the LTM®8040μModule™ LED driver integrates all the driver circuitryinto a single package, allowing designers to refocus theirtime and effort on the details of lighting design criticalto a product’s success.
One of the fi rst lessons in a basic electronics coursecovers the symbols for resistors, capacitors, inductors,voltage sources and current sources. Althougheach symbol represents a functional component of areal-world circuit, only some of the symbols have directphysical counterparts. For instance, the three discretepassive devices—resistors, capacitors, inductors—canbe picked off a shelf and placed on a real board muchas their symbolic analogs appear in a basic schematic.Likewise, while voltage sources have no direct 2-terminalanalog, a voltage source can be easily built with an offthe-shelf linear regulator.
In a recent discussion with a system designer, the requirementfor his power supply was to regulate 1.5Vand deliver up to 40A of current to a load that consistedof four FPGAs. This is up to 60W of power that must bedelivered in a small area with the lowest height profi lepossible to allow a steady fl ow of air for cooling. Thepower supply had to be surface mountable and operateat high enough effi ciency to minimize heat dissipation.He also demanded the simplest possible solution so histime could be dedicated to the more complex tasks. Asidefrom precise electrical performance, this solution had toremovethe heat generated during DC to DC conversionquickly so that the circuit and the ICs in the vicinity do notoverheat. Such a solution requires an innovative designto meet these criteria:
Avalanche photodiodes (APDs) are widely utilized in laserbased fiberoptic systems to convert optical data intoelectrical form. The APD is usually packaged with a signalconditioning amplifier in a small module. An APD receivermodule and attendant circuitry appears in Figure 1. TheAPD module (figure right) contains the APD and a transimpedance(e.g., current-to-voltage) amplifier. An opticalport permits interfacing fiberoptic cable to the APD’sphotosensitive portion. The module’s compact constructionfacilitates a direct, low loss connection between theAPD and the amplifier, necessary because of the extremelyhigh speed data rates involved
A recent trend in the design of portable devices has beento use ceramic capacitors to filter DC/DC converter inputs.Ceramic capacitors are often chosen because of theirsmall size, low equivalent series resistance (ESR) and highRMS current capability. Also, recently, designers havebeen looking to ceramic capacitors due to shortages oftantalum capacitors.
A large group of fiber optic lasers are powered by DCcurrent. Laser drive is supplied by a current source withmodulation added further along the signal path. Thecurrent source, although conceptually simple, constitutesan extraordinarily tricky design problem. There are anumber of practical requirements for a fiber optic currentsource and failure to consider them can cause laser and/or optical component destruction.
As logic systems get larger and more complex, theirsupply current requirements continue to rise. Systemsrequiring 100A are fairly common. A high current powersupply to meet such requirements usually requires parallelingseveral power regulators to alleviate the thermalstress on the individual power components. A powersupply designer is left with the choice of how to drive theseparalleled regulators: brute-force single-phase or smartPolyPhaseTM.
Photomultipliers (PMT), avalanche photodiodes (APD),ultrasonic transducers, capacitance microphones, radiationdetectors and similar devices require high voltage,low current bias. Additionally, the high voltage must bepristinely free of noise; well under a millivolt is a commonrequirement with a few hundred microvolts sometimesnecessary. Normally, switching regulator confi gurationscannot achieve this performance level without employingspecial techniques. One aid to achieving low noise is thatload currents rarely exceed 5mA. This freedom permitsoutput fi ltering methods that are usually impractical
鎖定放大是微弱信號檢測的重要手段。基于相關檢測理論，利用開關電容的開關實現鎖定放大器中乘法器的功能，提出開關電容和積分器相結合以實現相關檢測的方法，并設計出一種鎖定放大器。該鎖定放大器將微弱信號轉化為與之相關的方波，通過后續電路得到正比于被測信號的直流電平，為后續采集處理提供方便。測量數據表明鎖定放大器前級可將10-6 A的電流轉換為10-1 V的電壓，后級通過帶通濾波器級聯可將信號放大1×105倍。該方法在降低噪聲的同時，可對微弱信號進行放大，線性度較高、穩定性較好。
Abstract:
Lock-in Amplifying（LIA）is one of important means for weak signal detection. Based on cross-correlation detection theory， switch in the swithched capacitor was used as multiplier of LIA， and a new method of correlation detection was proposed combining swithched capacitor with integrator. A kind of LIA was designed which can convert the weak signal to square-wave， then DC proportional to measured signal was obtained through follow-up conditioning circuit， providing convenience for signal acquisition and processing. The measured data shows that the electric current（10-6 A） can be changed into voltage（10-1 V） by LIA， and the signal is magnified 1×105 times by cascade band-pass filter. The noise is suppressed and the weak signal is amplified. It has the advantages of good linearity and stability.
