My hands-on introduction to operational amplifiers was in 1969 while in the army as a junior scientist in the Atmospheric Science Laboratory at the White Sands Proving Grounds. We had taken a ...

Building on last month’s discussion of resistor noise, let’s check out some basics of amplifier noise. The non-inverting op amp configuration is most common for low noise applications so we’ll make ...

So, you have selected an MCU with an analog-to-digital converter (ADC) and analog comparator peripherals for your cost-sensitive application. You then realize that your sensor signal needs to be... So ...

Operational amplifiers (commonly called op amps) are a ubiquitous building block for designing electronic circuits. Today, these devices are fabricated as small integrated circuits, but the concept ...

If you’ve ever wondered why an op amp has the little plus and minus symbols on it, its because at the heart of it, the device is a differential amplifier. The problem is that — ideally, at least — it ...

In a balanced op-amp circuit, the op-amp inputs see equal impedances looking into the circuit. Balanced circuits provide better performance by cancelling some input errors and have a simple R F /R I ...

Q. Why buy an expensive comparator when an op amp is just as good? A. Because it isn't. My advice to anyone tempted to use an operational amplifier (op amp) as a comparator is the same as Mr. Punch's ...