Hickman's Analog and RF Circuits This Page Intentionally Left Blank Hickman's Analog and RF Circuits Ian Hickman BSc (Hons), C. Eng., MIEE, MIEEE Newoes Newnes An imprint of Butterworth-Heinemann Linacre House, Jordan Hill, Oxford OX2 8DP A division of Reed Educational and Professional Publishing Ltd ~,A member of the Reed Elsevier plc group OXFORD BOSTON JOHANNESBURG MELBOURNE NEW DELHI SINGAPORE First published 1998 (cid:14)9 Ian Hickman 1998 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any material form (including photocopying or storing in any medium by electronic means and whether or not transiently or incidentally to some other use of this publication) without the written permission of the copyright holder except in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 or under the terms of a licence issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency Ltd, 90 Tottenham Court Rd, London, England W 1P 9HE. Applications for the copyright holder's written permission to reproduce any part of this publication should be addressed to the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 0 7506 3742 0 Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. Typeset by Vision Typesetting Printed and bound by Antony Rowe Ltd, Eastbourne Transferred to digital print on demand, 2005 Contents Preface vI~1176 Part 1 General analog circuitry 1 Voltage references Oct. 1991 pp. 845-846 2 Versatile twin amplifier has many uses Dec. 1993 pp. 1044-1048 3 Differentiating op-amps 19 April 1994 pp. 322-325 4 Current conveyor ICs - a new building block 27 May 1994 pp. 402-405 5 Single-pot polarity and gain adjustment 38 Aug. 1994 p. 688 6 LCR measuring transformed 39 Nov. 1994 pp. 931-93 4 7 Cautionary tales for circuit designers 50 Nov. 1994 pp. 926-930 8 Analog signal processing 62 Aug. 1995 pp. 691-695 Sept. 1995 pp. 787-791 9 Reflections on opto-electronics 87 Nov. 1995 pp. 9 70-9 74 Part 2 Audio 10 Low distortion audio oscillator 103 June 1994 pp. 370-376 11 MOSFET stabilises Wien amplitude 118 Sept. 1994 p. 786 vi Contents 12 High-performance THD meter 120 Jan. 1996 pp. 52-55 13 Listening for clues 131 Jul. /Aug. 1996 pp. 596-598 Part 3 RF 14 White noise- white knight 141 Nov. 1993 pp. 956-959 15 Ready to use RF amplifiers 151 Feb. 1994 pp. 130-134 16 Synchronous oscillators: alternative to PLL? 162 June 1994 pp. 490-494 17 The ins and outs of oscillator action 172 J@ 1994 pp. 586-589 18 The transformer-ratio-arm-bridge 182 Aug. 1994 pp. 670-672 19 Smaller steps to better performance 190 Oct. 1994 pp. 842-846 20 Tweaking the diode detector 198 Feb. 1995 pp. 122-126 21 Oscillating at UHF 208 May 1995 pp. 418-421 22 Modulating linearly 218 J@ 1995 pp. 610-613 23 Sweeping to VHF 229 Oct. 1995 pp. 823-830 Part 4 Basic principles 24 Charting RF performance 245 March I994 pp. 256-260 25 Magic numbers in electronics 255 Sept. 1994 pp. 730-733 26 Harmonising theory with practice 263 Dec. 1994 pp. 998-1002 27 Analysing waveforms in the practical world 272 Jan. 1995 pp. 74-77 282 28 Sinewaves step by step March 1995 pp. 215-218 290 29 Is matching easy? Dec. 1995 pp. 1074-1076 Index 296 Preface I have been writing articles for magazines since the early 1970s, and many of these have been published in Electronics World (founded in 1911 as The Marconigraph but known for most of its life as Wireless World). This is undoubtedly the foremost electronics magazine in the UK, being widely read by professional electronics engineers on the one hand, and the more advanced electronics enthusiasts and hobbyists on the other, both in the UK and throughout many countries of the world, English-speaking and otherwise. A collection of these articles was published in 1995, under the title Analog Circuits Cookbook. This proved very popular, and the present companion volume is the result of a suggestion that further articles of mine from Electronics World should likewise be republished. Most but not all in this present collection of articles were published since the preparation of the earlier volume. And all appeared under the name Ian Hickman except two, which originally appeared under other pen names. Inevitably, in the preparation for publication of a magazine which appears every month, the occasional 'typo' crept into the articles as published, whilst the need to adjust articles to fit the space available led to the occasional pruning of text. As in the previous volume, the opportunity has been taken to restore the excised material, whilst it is hoped that most if not all errors in the articles as published have been identified and correc- ted. Each article has been prefaced with a brief introduction, indicating the contents and its general drift. By and large, each of the articles deals with one or other of my two main areas of expertise - general analog electronics, and RF. But a significant minority deal with the theory behind the various practical areas of circuit design or operation. Explanatory articles of this sort have long been a feature of Electronics World and the former 14areless World. For many years, such articles appeared from time to time from the pen of one 'Cathode viii Preface Ray', who had the knack of explaining things clearly, without resort to extensive mathematical treatment. These articles were always much ap- preciated by readers, and it is an open secret that the author was none other than that well-known writer on electronics, M G Scroggie. To some extent, it seems that the mantle of Cathode Ray has latterly fallen on my shoulders; at least, I hope that the articles in this volume dealing with the fundamentals of electronics will prove both interesting and easily assimil- able. The articles have been grouped in four sections: General analog cir- cuitry, Audio, RF and Basic principles. The latter section contains the 'Cathode Ray'-style explanatory articles, though it must be said that to some extent any classification scheme must be arbitrary- some articles could equally well be included under two if not three of the four groupings mentioned above. But that is neither here nor there; the important things are the articles themselves. So now, please read on .... Ian Hickman, 1997 Part 1 G E N E RAL ANALOG C IRC U ITRY