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An amplifier, electronic amplifier or (informally) amp is an electronic device that can increase the magnitude of a signal. It is a two-port electronic circuit that uses electric power from a power supply to increase the amplitude of a signal applied to its input terminals, producing a proportionally greater amplitude signal at its output. The amount of amplification provided by an amplifier is measured by its gain: the ratio of output voltage, current, or power to input. An amplifier is defined as a circuit that has a power gain greater than one.
An operational amplifier is a DC-coupled electronic voltage amplifier with a differential input, a (usually) single-ended output, and an extremely high gain. Its name comes from its original use of performing mathematical operations in analog computers.
In electronics, a comparator is a device that compares two voltages or currents and outputs a digital signal indicating which is larger. It has two analog input terminals and and one binary digital output . The output is ideally
A negative-feedback amplifier is an electronic amplifier that subtracts a fraction of its output from its input, so that negative feedback opposes the original signal. The applied negative feedback can improve its performance and reduces sensitivity to parameter variations due to manufacturing or environment. Because of these advantages, many amplifiers and control systems use negative feedback.
A differential amplifier is a type of electronic amplifier that amplifies the difference between two input voltages but suppresses any voltage common to the two inputs. It is an analog circuit with two inputs and and one output , in which the output is ideally proportional to the difference between the two voltages:
In electronics, a buffer amplifier is a unity gain amplifier that copies a signal from one circuit to another while transforming its electrical impedance to provide a more ideal source. This "buffers" the signal source in the first circuit against being affected by currents from the electrical load of the second circuit and may simply be called a buffer or follower when context is clear.
A gyrator is a passive, linear, lossless, two-port electrical network element proposed in 1948 by Bernard D. H. Tellegen as a hypothetical fifth linear element after the resistor, capacitor, inductor and ideal transformer. Unlike the four conventional elements, the gyrator is non-reciprocal. Gyrators permit network realizations of two-(or-more)-port devices which cannot be realized with just the four conventional elements. In particular, gyrators make possible network realizations of isolators and circulators. Gyrators do not however change the range of one-port devices that can be realized. Although the gyrator was conceived as a fifth linear element, its adoption makes both the ideal transformer and either the capacitor or inductor redundant. Thus the number of necessary linear elements is in fact reduced to three. Circuits that function as gyrators can be built with transistors and op-amps using feedback.
Transconductance, also infrequently called mutual conductance, is the electrical characteristic relating the current through the output of a device to the voltage across the input of a device. Conductance is the reciprocal of resistance.
A Colpitts oscillator, invented in 1918 by Canadian-American engineer Edwin H. Colpitts using vacuum tubes, is one of a number of designs for LC oscillators, electronic oscillators that use a combination of inductors (L) and capacitors (C) to produce an oscillation at a certain frequency. The distinguishing feature of the Colpitts oscillator is that the feedback for the active device is taken from a voltage divider made of two capacitors in series across the inductor.
This article illustrates some typical operational amplifier applications. A non-ideal operational amplifier's equivalent circuit has a finite input impedance, a non-zero output impedance, and a finite gain. A real op-amp has a number of non-ideal features as shown in the diagram, but here a simplified schematic notation is used, many details such as device selection and power supply connections are not shown. Operational amplifiers are optimised for use with negative feedback, and this article discusses only negative-feedback applications. When positive feedback is required, a comparator is usually more appropriate. See Comparator applications for further information.
The LM13700 is an integrated circuit (IC) containing two current-controlled operational transconductance amplifiers (OTA), each having differential inputs and a push-pull output. Linearizing diodes at the input can optionally be used by applying a bias current into Ibias to reduce distortion and allow increased input levels. The output bias can be programmed using an optional current into the Iabc pin. Two unconnected Darlington emitter follower output buffers capable of 20 mA each can be optionally connected to each OTA's output to complement the OTA's wide dynamic range. The bias currents of the Darlington output buffers on the LM13700 are independent of the Iabc pin. This may result in performance superior to that of the LM13600 in audio applications. This chip historically has been useful in audio electronics, especially in analog synthesizer circuits like voltage controlled oscillators, voltage controlled filters, and voltage controlled amplifiers.
The operational transconductance amplifier (OTA) is an amplifier that outputs a current proportional to its input voltage. Thus, it is a voltage controlled current source (VCCS). Three types of OTAs are single-input single-output, differential-input single-output, and differential-input differential-output, however this article focuses on differential-input single-output. There may be an additional input for a current to control the amplifier's transconductance.
Bootstrapping is a technique in the field of electronics where part of the output of a system is used at startup.
A fully differential amplifier (FDA) is a DC-coupled high-gain electronic voltage amplifier with differential inputs and differential outputs. In its ordinary usage, the output of the FDA is controlled by two feedback paths which, because of the amplifier's high gain, almost completely determine the output voltage for any given input.
Current differencing transconductance amplifier (CDTA) is a new active circuit element.
A nullor is a theoretical two-port network consisting of a nullator at its input and a norator at its output. Nullors represent an ideal amplifier, having infinite current, voltage, transconductance and transimpedance gain. Its transmission parameters are all zero, that is, its input–output behavior is summarized with the matrix equation
The input offset voltage is a parameter defining the differential DC voltage required between the inputs of an amplifier, especially an operational amplifier (op-amp), to make the output zero.
The Miller theorem refers to the process of creating equivalent circuits. It asserts that a floating impedance element, supplied by two voltage sources connected in series, may be split into two grounded elements with corresponding impedances. There is also a dual Miller theorem with regards to impedance supplied by two current sources connected in parallel. The two versions are based on the two Kirchhoff's circuit laws.
In electronics, a transimpedance amplifier (TIA) is a current to voltage converter, almost exclusively implemented with one or more operational amplifiers. The TIA can be used to amplify the current output of Geiger–Müller tubes, photo multiplier tubes, accelerometers, photo detectors and other types of sensors to a usable voltage. Current to voltage converters are used with sensors that have a current response that is more linear than the voltage response. This is the case with photodiodes where it is not uncommon for the current response to have better than 1% nonlinearity over a wide range of light input. The transimpedance amplifier presents a low impedance to the photodiode and isolates it from the output voltage of the operational amplifier. In its simplest form a transimpedance amplifier has just a large valued feedback resistor, Rf. The gain of the amplifier is set by this resistor and because the amplifier is in an inverting configuration, has a value of -Rf. There are several different configurations of transimpedance amplifiers, each suited to a particular application. The one factor they all have in common is the requirement to convert the low-level current of a sensor to a voltage. The gain, bandwidth, as well as current and voltage offsets change with different types of sensors, requiring different configurations of transimpedance amplifiers.
The current-feedback operational amplifier is a type of electronic amplifier whose inverting input is sensitive to current, rather than to voltage as in a conventional voltage-feedback operational amplifier (VFA). The CFA was invented by David Nelson at Comlinear Corporation, and first sold in 1982 as a hybrid amplifier, the CLC103. An early patent covering a CFA is U.S. patent 4,502,020, David Nelson and Kenneth Saller. The integrated circuit CFAs were introduced in 1987 by both Comlinear and Elantec. They are usually produced with the same pin arrangements as VFAs, allowing the two types to be interchanged without rewiring when the circuit design allows. In simple configurations, such as linear amplifiers, a CFA can be used in place of a VFA with no circuit modifications, but in other cases, such as integrators, a different circuit design is required. The classic four-resistor differential amplifier configuration also works with a CFA, but the common-mode rejection ratio is poorer than that from a VFA.
