Band-Pass Filtered, Inverting - 40 DB Attenuator, 10 HZ - 100 KHZ, 0.1 DB Error
Band-Pass Filtered, Inverting - 40 DB Attenuator, 10 HZ - 100 KHZ, 0.1 DB Error
Band-Pass Filtered, Inverting - 40 DB Attenuator, 10 HZ - 100 KHZ, 0.1 DB Error
TI Precision Designs
Circuit Description
Design Resources
Design Archive
TINA-TI
OPA1611
C1
R2
R1
C2
VIN
R4
+
VCM
VOUT
C9
An IMPORTANT NOTICE at the end of this TI reference design addresses authorized use, intellectual property matters and
other important disclaimers and information.
TINA-TI is a trademark of Texas Instruments
WEBENCH is a registered trademark of Texas Instruments
SLAU518-June 2013-Revised June 2013
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Design Summary
The design requirements are as follows:
Output: -40 dB
The design goals and performance are summarized in Table 1. Figure 1 depicts the ac transfer function of
the design measured from 1 Hz to 10 MHz.
Table 1. Comparison of Design Goals, Simulated, and Measured Performance
Goals
Simulated
Measured
Offset (mV)
0.0623
0.11388
0.5
0.122
0.11
0.1
0.0061
0.01
0.5
0.5876
0.05
2.327
3.521
3.797
3.844
-20
-30
-40
Gain (dB)
-50
-60
Frequency
10 Hz
1 kHz
100 kHz
-70
-80
Gain
-40.11 dB
-39.99 dB
-40.05 dB
VOUT
-90
-100
-110
-120
1.E+00
1.E+01
1.E+02
1.E+03
1.E+04
1.E+05
1.E+06
1.E+07
Frequency (Hz)
Figure 1: Measured ac transfer function
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Theory of Operation
A more complete schematic for this design is shown in Figure 2 and the full transfer function is shown in
Equation 1. Although the full transfer function looks daunting, the circuit can be broken down into a few
easy to design subsections. The circuit is based on a standard inverting amplifier and the ratio of the input
resistor, R1, and the feedback resistor, R2, set the pass-band attenuation. The combination of R1 and the
st
input capacitor, C1, create the 1 order high-pass filter and R2, C2, the output resistor, R4, and the output
nd
capacitor, C9, make up the 2 order low-pass filter. R5 and C10 are used to provide decoupling of the VCM
signal and to ensure that the non-inverting input of the amplifier does not float if the reference voltage,
VCM, is not connected. R3 is used to terminate a 50 input signal and can be removed if not desired. The
values of R3, R5, and C10 do not affect the transfer function of this design.
C1
VIN
R1
1 uF 100 k
R3
49.9
R2 1 k
C2
1200 pF
R4
+
VCM
C10
0.1uF
8.2
R5
1 k
VOUT
C9
68 nF
VCM
VlN
1 R1C1 R 2 C 2 R 4 C 2 s R1R 2 C1 R1R 4 C1 R 2R 4 C 9 s 2 R1R 2R 4 C1C 2 C 9 s 3
(1)
In the following sections, a brief circuit stability overview will be provided and then the circuit will be divided
nd
st
into two sub-circuits that allow for easier design of the pass-band gain, 2 order low-pass filter, and 1
order high-pass filter.
2.1
Circuit Stability
A full stability analysis is outside the scope of this document and can be reviewed using the first reference
is Section 9. However, the two design requirements that must be met to keep this design stable will be
explained. The first requirement is that the output resistor, R4, must be large enough to effectively cancel
the interaction of the output capacitor, C9, and internal op amp output impedance (not shown). This can
be determined in SPICE by setting the amplifier as a non-inverting buffer driving the output resistor in
series with the output capacitor. Then, input a 25 mV 100 mV step to the input and observe the
overshoot and ringing on the output of the amplifier. Continue to increase the series output resistor until a
stable response with less than 25% overshoot is achieved which correlates to roughly 45 of phase
margin. In this design it was determined that an 8.2 series resistor properly compensated capacitive
loads up to 100 nF and will therefore be used for the value of R4 in this design.
The second requirement is that once the output capacitor and resistor have been chosen, the design must
ensure that the low-pass filter formed by R4 and C9, LPFPOLE1, is greater than the frequency of the lowpass filter formed by R2, R4, and C9, LPFPOLE2, by at least two times. This will ensure there is not any
undesired gain peaking or rapid phase shifts in the feedback path which could lead to instability.
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2.2
To simplify the design of the pass-band gain and the 2 order low-pass filter, it will be assumed that C1
acts as a short (0 ) for frequencies above the high-pass filter frequency of 10 Hz. Figure 3 displays the
resulting circuit after shorting C1 while leaving the other components populated.
C1
R3
49.9
VIN
R1
R2
100 k
C2
1 k
1200 pF
R4
+
VCM
C10
0.1uF
8.2
R5
1 k
VOUT
C9
68 nF
VOUT
R2
VlN
R1 1 R 2 R 4 C 2 s R 2 R 4 C 4 C9 s 2
2.2.1
(2)
Pass-Band Gain
The inverting gain that will be present in the pass-band of the final transfer function is defined in Equation
3.
GainPASS-BAND
R2
R1
(3)
To set the pass-band gain to -40 dB (0.01 V/V), R2 must be 100 times smaller than R1. The input resistor,
R1, will set the ac input resistance and also will be a contributor to the final noise of the circuit. Setting it to
100 k will allow for proper noise performance and will allow for the calculation of the other values in the
circuit.
R2
2.2.2
nd
R1
GainPASSBAND
100 k
1k
100 V/V
(4)
This design is supposed to operate with a relatively flat response over the frequency range of 10 Hz to 100
kHz. Therefore, the low-pass cutoff frequency must be set greater than 100 kHz to ensure a flat response
up to 100 kHz. The cutoff frequencies will therefore be set greater than 150 kHz.
The design of the 2
nd
LPFPOLE1
1
2 R 4 C9
(5)
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LPFPOLE2
1
2 R 2 R 4 C 2
(6)
R4 is in series with the output of the amplifier and should be kept small to prevent large voltage drops from
forming across it if the circuit needs to deliver current to a load. The R2 feedback path will compensate for
any voltage drop across R4 but only as long as the op amp can increase its output voltage high enough to
compensate for the drop which is limited by the supply voltage and the output swing-to-rail performance of
the op amp. Also, as further described in Section 2.1, the value of R4 must properly compensate the
capacitive load presented by C9. Based on analysis also further described in Section 2.1, R4 will be
selected to be 8.2 , allowing for the calculation of C9.
As described further in Section 2.1, the frequency of LPFPOLE2 must be less than the frequency of
LPFPOLE1, preferably by at least two times, to ensure proper stability of the circuit. Therefore to enable
LPFPOLE2 to be set to 150 kHz, LPFPOLE1 will be set to 300 kHz.
C9
1
1
64.7 nF
2 R 4 LPFPOLE1 2 8.2 300 kHz
(7)
C2
1
1
1052pF
2 R 2 R 4 LPFPOLE2 2 1008.2 150 kHz
(8)
A larger standard value of 1200 pF was chosen for C2 over a smaller value to ensure the stability of the
design was maintained.
2.3
To simplify the design of the pass-band gain and the 1 order high-pass filter, it will be assumed that C2
and C4 act as open circuits (>1 G) for frequencies below the low-pass filter frequency of 100 kHz.
Figure 4 displays the resulting circuit after opening C 2 and C9 while leaving the other components
populated.
C1
R1
R2 1 k
1 uF 100 k
R3
49.9
VIN
C2
R4
+
VCM
C10
0.1uF
8.2
R5
1 k
VOUT
C9
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VOUT
R 2 C1 s
VlN
1 R1 C1 s
(9)
The pole that defines the high-pass filter cutoff frequency, HPFPOLE1, is shown in Equation 10.
HPFPOLE1
1
2 R1 C1
(10)
To ensure little attenuation at 10 Hz, set the high-pass filter cutoff frequency below 2.5 Hz by choosing C1.
C1
1
1
0.636 uF
2 R1 HPFPOLE1 2 100 k 2.5 Hz
(11)
Choosing a standard value of 1 uF for C1 pushes the high-pass cutoff frequency a little lower helping to
further reduce attenuation at 10 Hz.
Component Selection
3.1
Operational Amplifier
Since this is primarily an ac application, the op amp used in this design should have low noise, low totalharmonic-distortion (THD), high slew-rate, wide bandwidths, high open-loop gain (AOL). A rail-to-rail
output stage is desirable to allow for lower supply voltage operation while maintaining good output swing
capabilities.
The OPA1611 high-performance bipolar input audio op amp has only 1.1nV/Hz input noise and
0.00015% THD at 1 kHz, 27V/us slew rate, 40 MHz bandwidth, and 130 dB of AOL making it an excellent
choice for a high performance version of this circuit.
Other amplifier options for this application include the chopper-stabilized OPA211, OPA134, or OPA234 as
further discussed in Section 7.
3.2
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Simulation
TM
The TINA-TI schematic shown in Figure 5 includes the circuit values obtained in the design process. A
dc offset voltage of 62.6 V and dc quiescent current of 3.797 mA were reported by the simulation.
C1 1u
R2 1k
R1 100k
C2 1.2n
R3 49.9
4.1
TM
VOUT 62.604uV
V+
C9 68n
Iq 3.797mA
C11 100p
VCM 0
V-
Figure 5: TINA-TI
C12 100n
C8 100n
C7 10u
C10 100n
V- 15
R4 8.2
U1 OPA1612
R5 1k
V+ 15
C4 100n
C3 10u
V+
C5 100p
V-
C6 100n
VIN
AC Transfer Function
The ac transfer function results of the circuit, shown in Figure 6, show the proper pass-band gain and filter
frequencies based on the component values calculated in Section 2.
T
-20.00
Gain (dB)
-40.00
-60.00
10 Hz: -40.110 dB
1 kHz: -40.0000 dB
100 kHz: -40.497 dB
-80.00
-100.00
1
10
100
1k
10k
Frequency (Hz)
100k
1M
10M
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A 100-sweep Monte-Carlo simulation was run with the component tolerances specified in Section 3 to
produce more realistic results. Figure 7 shows a zoomed-in version of the ac transfer function allowing the
deviation between the Monte-Carlo cases to be viewed easier.
T -39.00
Gain (dB)
-39.50
-40.00
-40.50
-41.00
1
10
100
1k
Frequency (Hz)
10k
100k
1M
(9)
Max
Average ()
Std. Dev. ()
Gain at 10 Hz (dB)
-40.1183
-40.097
-40.1083
0.00458
0.122
-40.0043
-39.9952
-39.9998
0.00195
0.0061
-40.5583
-40.4388
-40.4959
0.03055
0.5876
3- Gain Error
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4.2
Transient Response
The transient response of the design with a 100 mVpp, 1 kHz sine-wave input signal is shown in Figure 8.
As expected, the output is 1 mVpp with the small dc offset reported in Table 1. This test case is an
example of a useful application of this circuit for attenuating the outputs of function generators which
commonly have minimum output amplitudes of 100 mVpp.
50.00m
VIN
0.00
-50.00m
563.28u
VOUT 63.39u
-436.51u
0
Figure 8: TINA-TI
TM
1m
2m
3m
Time (s)
4m
5m
- Low-level signal generation with 100 mVpp input and 1 mVpp output
25.00
VIN
0.00
-25.00
250.08m
VOUT
0.00
-249.17m
0
Figure 9: TINA-TI
TM
1m
2m
3m
Time (s)
4m
5m
- Large signal attenuation with 50 Vpp input and 500 mVpp output
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4.3
Step Response
The small-signal stability of the system was verified by shorting VIN to GND and applying a step response
to the non-inverting input of the op amp that caused the output to change by roughly 100 mV. The results
are shown in Figure 10.
T
125.00m
Voltage (V)
100.00m
75.00m
50.00m
25.00m
0.00
0.00
25.00u
TM
4.4
50.00u
Time (s)
75.00u
100.00u
Noise Testing
The total noise of the circuit was simulated from 1 Hz to 10 MHz. The results, shown in Figure 11 display
the noise bandwidth of the circuit to be roughly 450 kHz.
2.32u
1 kHz: 150.9 nV
10 kHz: 463.1 nV
100 kHz: 1.444 uV
1 MHz: 2.229 uV
10 MHz: 2.327 uV
1.16u
0.00
1
10
100
TM
10
1k
10k
Frequency (Hz)
100k
1M
10M
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4.5
Goals
Simulated
Offset (mV)
0.0623
0.5
0.122
0.1
0.0061
0.5
0.5876
2.327
3.797
PCB Design
The PCB schematic and bill of materials can be found in Appendix A.1 and A.2.
5.1
PCB Layout
For optimal performance in this design follow standard precision PCB layout guidelines including: using
ground planes, proper power supply decoupling, keeping the summing node as small as possible, and
using short thick traces for sensitive nodes. The layout for the design is shown in Figure 12.
11
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6.1
AC Transfer Function
AC transfer function data was collected using a gain phase analyzer that swept the input signal from 1 Hz
10 MHz while measuring the output signal. The results are displayed in Figure 13 and Table 5.
-20
-30
-40
Gain (dB)
-50
-60
Gain @ 10 Hz = -40.11 dB
Gain @ 1 kHz = -39.99 dB
Gain @ 100 kHz = -40.05 dB
-70
VOUT
-80
-90
-100
-110
-120
1.E+00
1.E+01
1.E+02
1.E+03
1.E+04
1.E+05
1.E+06
1.E+07
Frequency (Hz)
Figure 13: Measured ac transfer function
6.2
0.11
0.01
0.05
DC Measurements
DC measurements were made for the offset voltage and the quiescent current for five units. The average
values are reported in Table 5 below.
Table 5: Measured dc result summary
Measured
12
0.11388
3.844
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6.3
6.3.1
Transient Measurements
Small Signal Generation
Testing a high-gain input stage requires a low-level test signal source to prevent the input stage from
saturating. This circuit is useful for attenuating the outputs of common function generators to create these
low-level test signals. Figure 14 displays the generation of a 1 mVpp output signal from a 100 mVpp input
signal.
Figure 14: Measured transient response with 100 mVpp input and 1 mVpp output
6.4
Figure 15: Measured transient response with 50 Vpp input and 500 mVpp output
SLAU518-June 2013-Revised June 2013
13
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6.5
Small-Signal Stability
The small-signal response is indicative of the stability of a circuit design. An unstable design presents
unwanted overshoot, ringing, and long settling times. Figure 16 displays the output of the attenuator circuit
when a 100 mV step input (Channel 1) is applied to the non-inverting input of the circuit. The output
Channel 2) quickly settles to the input level with almost no overshoot or ringing indicating a stable design.
Figure 16: Measured small signal step response for stability analysis
6.6
Output FFT
The FFT was taken from 20 Hz to 100 kHz to view the output spectrum of the circuit with a 1 Vrms 1 kHz
input signal. The output spectrum shows the expected -40 dB output at 1 kHz and the rest of the
frequency spectrum is very clean with a low noise floor.
Figure 17: Measured FFT with 1 kHz 1 Vrms input and 1 Vrms reference
14
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6.7
Output Noise
The output noise of this attenuator was measured to a 10 MHz bandwidth using a 101 V/V, low-noise,
band-pass filtered gain stage to increase the noise output of the attenuator circuit to a level measurable by
common lab equipment. For more information on op amp circuit noise and the calculation, simulation, and
TM
measurement of noise see the second reference in Section 9. A TINA-TI representation of the 101 V/V
filtered gain stage is shown in Figure 18. The output of the attenuator circuit is high-pass filtered by CG1
and RG1, then gained by 101 V/V by U2, RG2, and RG3, and then lastly is low-pass filtered at 10 MHz by RG4
and CG2.
CG5 10u
V1 5
V- 15
V-
C5 100p
C6 100n
NOISE_ATTENUATOR
R4 8.2
C9 68n
C11 100p
C12 100n
CG3 100n
NOISE_TOTAL
CG1 100u
V+
U1 OPA1612
R5 1k
VEE
VCC
V2 5
V-
RG1 220
R3 49.9
CG6 10u
R2 1k
R1 100k
C2 1.2n
C10 100n
C4 100n
C1 1u
C8 100n
V+ 15
C3 10u
VCC
C7 10u
V+
DIS
RG4 100
U2 OPA847
CG4 100n
CG2 160p
VEE
RG2 220
TM
RG3 22k
The output noise of the circuit shown in Figure 18 (NoiseTOTAL) is measured and then the output noise of
the attenuator circuit (NoiseATTENUATOR) is calculated by first vector subtracting the calibrated output noise
of both the filtered gain circuit (NoiseGAINSTAGE) and the measurement instrument (NoiseSCOPE) yielding the
gained attenuator noise (NoiseATTENUATOR_GAIN). The final attenuator circuit noise can then be obtained by
dividing by the 101 V/V gain of the filtered gain circuit. A final conversion into VRMS may or may not be
required depending on the output of the instrument. An example of these calculations is shown for the
oscilloscope measurements in the following equations:
(12)
(13)
NoiseTOTAL 6 mVpp
(14)
NoiseATTENUATOR
NoiseATTEND_GAIN
NoiseATTENUATOR( VRMS )
101V/V
21.17 Vpp
NoiseATTENUATOR
3.529 Vrms
6
(15)
(16)
(17)
15
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The output noise was measured using a few different instruments to ensure correlation between
measurement methods. Measurements made with the spectrum analyzer were converted from a spectral
density (nV/Hz) to Vrms based on the bandwidth of the measurement (BW) and the correction factor
st
(Kn) based on the order of the filter used. For a 1 order low-pass filter, Kn is equal to 1.57.
NoiseVRMS NoisenV/
Hz
BW * 1.57
(18)
6.8
3.521
Oscilloscope (Vrms)
3.529
Goals
Simulated
Measured
Offset (mV)
0.0623
0.11388
0.5
0.122
0.11
0.1
0.0061
0.01
0.5
0.5876
0.05
2.327
3.521
3.797
3.844
Modifications
Almost any amplifier can perform this application but certain amplifiers are better for high performance
designs. High performance versions of this circuit will benefit from an amplifier with low-noise, low THD,
high AOL, wide bandwidths, and high supply voltages. Other +36 V amplifiers for this application are the
OPA627, OPA827, OPA211, OPA140, OPA134. Single-supply versions of this circuit could be created
with the OPA320, OPA350, OPA365, or OPA376 devices.
Table 8: Alternate +36V Amplifiers
Amplifier
Max Offset
Voltage (V)
Noise at 1 kHz
(nV/Hz)
THD at 1 kHz
(%)
AOL (dB)
Bandwidth
(MHz)
Quiescent
Current (mA)
OPA1611
500
1.1
0.000015
130
40
3.6
OPA134
0.00008
120
OPA140
120
5.1
0.00005
126
11
1.8
OPA211
50
1.1
0.000015
130
45
3.6
OPA627
100
5.2
0.00003
120
16
OPA827
150
0.00004
126
22
4.8
16
Amplifier
Max Offset
Voltage (V)
Noise
THD
AOL
Bandwidth
(MHz)
Quiescent
Current (mA)
OPA320
150
8.5
0.0005
130
20
1.6
OPA350
500
17
0.0006
122
38
5.2
OPA376
25
7.5
0.00027
134
5.5
0.76
OPA365
200
12
0.0004
120
50
4.6
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Green, Tim, Operational Amplifier Stability Parts 1-11, November 2008, Available: http://www.engenius.net/site/zones/acquisitionZONE/technical_notes/acqt_050712
2.
17
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Appendix A.
A.1 Electrical Schematic
The Altium electrical schematic for this design can be seen in Figure A.1.
18
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19