9/7/2018 Negative Feedback and Negative Feedback Systems

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Negative Feedback Systems

Negative Feedback is the most common form of feedback control con guration used in process, micro-
computer and ampli cation systems

Feedback is the process by which a fraction of the output signal, either a voltage or a current, is used as an input.
If this feed back fraction is opposite in value or phase (“anti-phase”) to the input signal, then the feedback is said
to be Negative Feedback, or degenerative feedback.

Negative feedback opposes or subtracts from the input signals giving it many advantages in the design and
stabilisation of control systems. For example, if the systems output changes for any reason, then negative
feedback affects the input in such a way as to counteract the change.

Feedback reduces the overall gain of a system with the degree of reduction being related to the systems open-
loop gain. Negative feedback also has effects of reducing distortion, noise, sensitivity to external changes as well
as improving system bandwidth and input and output impedances.

Feedback in an electronic system, whether negative feedback or positive feedback is unilateral in direction.
Meaning that its signals ow one way only from the output to the input of the system. This then makes the loop
gain, G of the system independent of the load and source impedances.

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As9/7/2018
feedback implies a closed-loop system it must therefore
Negative have
Feedback and a summing
Negative point. In a negative feedback system
Feedback Systems

this summing point or junction at its input subtracts the feedback signal from the input signal to form an error
signal, β which drives the system. If the system has a positive gain, the feedback signal must be subtracted from
the input signal in order for the feedback to be negative as shown.

Negative Feedback Circuit

 
The circuit represents a system with positive gain, G and feedback, β. The summing junction at its input
subtracts the feedback signal from the input signal to form the error signal Vin - βG, which drives the system.

Then using the basic closed-loop circuit above we can derive the general feedback equation as being:

Negative Feedback Equation

 
We see that the effect of the negative feedback is to reduce the gain by the factor of: 1 + βG. This factor is
called the “feedback factor” or “amount of feedback” and is often speci ed in decibels (dB) by the relationship of
20 log (1+ βG).
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Effects
9/7/2018 of Negative Feedback Negative Feedback and Negative Feedback Systems

If the open-loop gain, G is very large, then βG will be much greater than 1, so that the overall gain of the system
is roughly equal to 1/β. If the open-loop gain decreases due to frequency or the effects of system ageing,
providing that βG is still relatively large, the overall system gain does not change very much. So negative
feedback tends to reduce the effects of gain change giving what is generally called “gain stability”.

Negative Feedback Example No1

A system has a gain of 80dB without feedback. If the negative feedback fraction is 1/50th. Calculate the closed-
loop gain of the system in dB with the addition of negative feedback.

 
Then we can see that the system has a loop gain of 10,000 and a closed-loop gain of 34dB.

Negative Feedback Example No2

If after 5 years the loop gain of the system without negative feedback has fallen to 60dB and the feedback
fraction has remained constant at 1/50th. Calculate the new closed-loop gain value of the system.

 
Then we can see from the two examples that without feedback, after 5 years of use the systems gain has fallen
from 80dB down to 60dB, (10,000 to 1,000) a drop in open loop gain of about 25%.
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However
9/7/2018 with the addition of negative feedback the
Negative systems
Feedback gain has
and Negative only Systems
Feedback fallen from 34dB to 33.5dB, a
reduction of less than 1.5%, which proves that negative feedback gives added stability to a systems gain.

Therefore we can see that by applying negative feedback to a system greatly reduces its overall gain compared
to its gain without feedback.

The systems gain without feedback can be very large but not precise as it may change from one system device to
the next, then it is possible to design a system with suf cient open-loop gain that, after the negative feedback
has been added, the overall gain matches the desired value.

Also, if the feedback network is constructed from passive elements having stable characteristics, the overall gain
becomes very steady and unaffected by variation in the systems inherent open-loop gain.

Negative Feedback in Operational Ampli ers

Operational ampli ers (op-amps) are the most commonly used type of linear integrated circuit but they have a
very high gain. The open-loop voltage gain, AVOL, of a standard 741 op-amp is its voltage gain when there is no
negative feedback applied and the open-loop voltage gain of an op-amp is the ratio of its output voltage, Vout,
to its differential input voltage, Vin, ( Vout/Vin ).

The typical value of AVOL for a 741 op-amp is more than 200,000 (106dB). So an input voltage signal of only
1mV, would result in an output voltage of over 200 volts! forcing the output immediately into saturation.
Obviously this high open-loop voltage gain needs to be controlled in some way, and we can do just that by using
negative feedback.

The use of negative feedback can signi cantly improve the performance of an operational ampli er and any op-
amp circuit that does not use negative feedback is considered too unstable to be useful. But how can we use
negative feedback to control an op-amp. Well consider the circuit below of a Non-inverting Operational
Ampli er.

Non-inverting Op-amp Circuit

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Negative
9/7/2018 Feedback Example No3 Negative Feedback and Negative Feedback Systems

An operational ampli er with an open-loop voltage gain, AVOL of 320,000 without feedback is to be used as a
non-inverting ampli er. Calculate the values of the feedback resistances, R1 and R2 required to stabilise the
circuit with a closed loop gain of 20.

The generalised closed-loop feedback equation we derived above is given as:

By rearranging the feedback formula we get a feedback fraction, β of:

 
Then putting the values of: A = 320,000 and G = 20, into the above equation we get the value of β as:

 
Because in this case the open-loop gain of the op-amp is very high ( A = 320,000 ), the feedback fraction, β will
be roughly equal to the reciprocal of the closed-loop gain 1/G only as the value of 1/A will be incredibly small.
Then β (the feedback fraction) is equal to 1/20 = 0.05.

As the resistors, R1 and R2 form a simple series-voltage potential divider network across the non-inverting
ampli er, the closed-loop voltage gain of the circuit will be determined by the ratios of these resistances as: 5/10
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 9/7/2018 Negative Feedback and Negative Feedback Systems

 
If we assume resistor R2 has a value of 1,000Ω, or 1kΩ, then the value of resistor R1 will be:

 
Then for the non-inverting ampli er circuit about to have a closed-loop gain of 20, the values of the negative
feedback resistors required will be in this case, R1 = 19kΩ and R2 = 1kΩ, giving us a non-inverting ampli er
circuit of:

Non-inverting Op-amp Circuit

 
There are many advantages to using feedback within a systems design, but the main advantages of using
Negative Feedback in ampli er circuits is to greatly improve their stability, better tolerance to component
variations, stabilisation against DC drift as well as increasing the ampli ers bandwidth.

Examples of negative feedback in common ampli er circuits include the resistor Rƒ in op-amp circuits as we
have seen above, resistor, RS in FET based ampli ers and resistor, RE in bipolar transistor (BJT) ampli ers.
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 9/7/2018 Negative Feedback and Negative Feedback Systems

28 Comments

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D Dozzy
comprehensive

Posted on September 05th 2018 | 11:42 pm

 Reply

P Pankaj Kumar
I’m satis ed your question
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9/7/2018
Posted on August 22nd 2018 | 4:21 pm Negative Feedback and Negative Feedback Systems
 Reply

S Saran
De ne negative feed back

Posted on August 21st 2018 | 2:14 pm

 Reply

r rasel amin
Mention some key feature of negative feedback

Posted on August 05th 2018 | 5:42 pm

 Reply

B Bhavana
Nice

Posted on July 20th 2018 | 2:09 pm

 Reply

A Ashton Manyanga
thank u for the explanations

Posted on June 26th 2018 | 10:55 am

 Reply

Daniel
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9/7/2018 feedback voltage formula Negative Feedback and Negative Feedback Systems
D
Posted on May 03rd 2018 | 5:04 pm
 Reply

A Aabed Solayman
That’s explained a lot to me. Thank you!

I still have a question or something that I misunderstand. How there is a voltage difference between the
negative and positive pins of the Op-amp. In previous tutorials, the voltage was Zero so that the current
doesn’t enter the Op-amp.

Posted on March 22nd 2018 | 2:19 pm

 Reply

S Sai kumar
Actually one of the pins was grounded in the previous page, but here theres a resitor between
the pin and gnd , thus giving a votage between + and –

Posted on April 30th 2018 | 1:33 pm

 Reply

H HARI OM MEENA
Very nice

Posted on February 17th 2018 | 7:08 pm

 Reply

b beverly sango
makes sense

Posted on January 21st 2018 | 8:05 pm

https://www.electronics-tutorials.ws/systems/negative-feedback.html  Reply
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