PEASEPORRIDGE
WHAT’S ALL THIS BEST
STUFF, ANYHOW?
Bob Pease
CONTRIBUTING EDITOR
’ve been working with
I precision op amps.
Some have good linear-
ity. Some are excellent. Some
have high ZOUT. Some have
low. Some are bipolar, oth-
ers are CMOS. The figure
shows the basic test I’ve
been using for linearity to
exercise the output to 20 V
p-p by applying a ±10-V sine
or triangle wave to the sig-
nal input.
Meanwhile, the noise gain
of 1000 (R2/R1) magnifies
the input voltage V(
) by a
factor of 1000 so the scope
can see (on a 5-mV scale) a
5-µV signal in cross-plot
mode. The noise can be as
low as 5 µV p-p, and you
can see the distortion of just
a microvolt or two riding
along under the noise.
It’s true that many engi-
neers are interested in the
total harmonic distortion
plus noise (THD+N). How-
ever, the distortion riding
along under the noise is
sometimes important, even
though an Audio Precision
20 •••
can most easily measure
THD+N.
I did some evaluation on
the LM4562 precision audio
op amp. Its noise for an
audio bandwidth is down
near 0.4 µVRMS, and at least
that’s easy to measure. But I
still had to measure the dis-
tortion at 1 kHz. The test cir-
cuit in the figure can’t show
the linearity of the gain at 1
kHz, only at 5 or 10 Hz.
That’s because the ac error
is so big, it isn’t easy to see
the distortion. For example,
the LM4562’s ac gain at 1
kHz is about 60,000. Not
bad, but for a full output,
the summing point error is
333 µV, and it’s hard to see
if that is linear within a few
microvolts.
CHEATERS EVENTUALLY
PROSPER • So I decided to
cheat. I used a small vari-
able capacitor—a few inch-
es of twisted pair, often
called a “gimmick,” using
teflon wires. I connected
this from the V IN to the
input of the op amp. As I
wound up the wires, the ac
component of the error
voltage shrank a lot.
I kept increasing the fre-
quency as well as the capaci-
tance. Finally at 1 kHz, I got
it down under 1 µV of signal
plus a few µV RMS of noise.
This provided good insight
into what the 1-kHz gain
looked like. But why was the
noise so big?
I realized that I’d been
using this lazy man’s gain test
for so long, I wasn’t paying
attention to the way the noise
of the 1k resistor (about 4
nV/√Hz) was bigger than the
op amp’s noise. So, it was
time to cut the impedance
levels! I didn’t rewire the cir-
cuit. Instead, I just slapped in
20k across each 1 MΩ and
20 Ω across the 1k. Of
course, the capacitance had
to be scaled up too, so I put
in about 140 pF on top of the
3-pF gimmick.
This provided a definitely
improved view of the distor-
tion, with an improved noise
floor. I could see that the ac
distortion, even at 1 kHz,
was somewhere well below
1/2 µV p-p. But I still could-
n’t see exactly how low. So I
got mad and fed this signal
into our HP3561A spectrum
analyzer. This plainly
showed the amount of the
distortion, such as 71.45 nV
at 2.2 kHz, with a 10k load.
(It degraded to 200 nV with a
1k load.)
The combination of the
subtracting and self-ampli-
fying effects of my circuit,
plus the ac cancellation, plus
the high resolution of the
spectrum analyzer, showed
–159 dB of distortion at 2.2
kHz (second harmonic)
when running the LM4562
at a 20-V p-p sine output at
1.1 kHz. This was the best
distortion I have ever seen,
and fortunately the best test
circuit I have ever seen, or
we wouldn’t have been able
to measure it.
Comments invited!
rap@galaxy.nsc.com —or:
Mail Stop D2597A, National
Semiconductor
P.O. Box 58090, Santa
Clara, CA 95052-8090
BOB PEASE obtained a BSEE
from MIT in 1961 and is staff sci-
entist at National Semiconductor
Corp., Santa Clara, Calif.
ED ONLINE 14109
12.01.06 ELECTRONIC DESIGN