Design of analog electronics - analog electronics 1 training

The course focusses on specifying and designing the most essential analog functions for embedded systems using standard integrated circuits and passive components.

It presents the basic design theory and its application in the design of application-specific amplifiers using operational amplifiers.

Included in the course price are the course book and the use of the symbolic simulator SLiCAP (Read more here).

The course will be organized either:

• through weekly half day online Zoom meetings OR
• for the theoretical part through weekly half day online Zoom meetings followed by the practical part through a number of consecutive classical course days in the Netherlands during which the theory is applied in design cases with intensive guidance by the lecturer.

In both situations course participants require a laptop with three packages installed: Maxima CAD (Computer Algebra System), Python (under Windows: Anaconda) and LTSpice. All packages are free and open source and available for Windows, Linux and MacOS.

After having attended the course, the participant:

• will know the characteristic properties of ideal(ised) amplifiers and will be able to derive the functional requirements for amplifiers from their application;
• will be able to characterise the non-ideal behavior of amplifiers and will know to derive performance requirements from the application description;
• will know about other relevant design aspects of amplifiers;
• will be able to design low-noise and power efficient amplifier structures for arbitrary port impedance and port isolation requirements with the aid of feedback techniques, balancing techniques and isolation techniques;
• will be able to relate the properties of the components in the feedback network to important performance aspects and costs factors of the amplifier, as: inaccuracy, noise, nonlinearity, power dissipation, area and costs;
• will be able to model individual performance aspects of voltage-feedback and current-feedback operational amplifiers;
• will know about other relevant performance aspects of operational amplifiers, such as: input voltage range, output voltage and current drive capability and voltage slew rate;
• will know in which way and to what extent the equivalent input noise sources of an operational amplifier affect the noise performance of the negative feedback amplifier;
• will be able to apply the asymptotic-gain negative feedback model to derive budgets for properties of the operational amplifiers and the passive components of the negative feedback amplifier.

This course is intended for designers with little or no experience in analog electronic design as well as for experienced analog designers who want to improve their skills.

Education: At least BSc in physics or electrical engineering. Prior knowledge: linear algebra and matrices, complex numbers, transformations, network theory.