AD826
THEORY OF OPERATION
The AD826 is a low cost, wide band, high performance dual
operational amplifier which can drive heavy capacitive and
resistive loads. It also achieves a constant slew rate, bandwidth
and settling time over its entire specified temperature range.
The AD826 (Figure 35) consists of a degenerated NPN
differential pair driving matched PNPs in a folded-cascode gain
stage. The output buffer stage employs emitter followers in a
class AB amplifier which delivers the necessary current to the
load while maintaining low levels of distortion.
+V
S
For high performance circuits, it is recommended that a
“balancing” resistor be used to reduce the offset errors caused
by bias current flowing through the input and feedback resistors.
The balancing resistor equals the parallel combination of R
IN
and R
F
and thus provides a matched impedance at each input
terminal. The offset voltage error will then be reduced by more
than an order of magnitude.
APPLYING THE AD826
The AD826 is a breakthrough dual amp that delivers precision
and speed at low cost with low power consumption. The AD826
offers excellent static and dynamic matching characteristics,
combined with the ability to drive heavy resistive and capacitive
loads. As with all high frequency circuits, care should be taken
to maintain overall device performance as well as their matching.
The following items are presented as general design considerations.
C
F
OUTPUT
Circuit Board Layout
Input and output runs should be laid out so as to physically
isolate them from remaining runs. In addition, the feedback
resistor of each amplifier should be placed away from the
feedback resistor of the other amplifier, since this greatly
reduces inter-amp coupling.
–IN
+IN
Choosing Feedback and Gain Resistors
In order to prevent the stray capacitance present at each
amplifier’s summing junction from limiting its performance,
the feedback resistors should be ≤1 kΩ. Since the summing
junction capacitance may cause peaking, a small capacitor
(1 pF–5pF) maybe paralleled with R
F
to neutralize this effect.
Finally, sockets should be avoided, because of their tendency to
increase interlead capacitance.
–V
S
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Figure 35. Simplified Schematic
The capacitor, C
F
, in the output stage mitigates the effect of
capacitive loads. With low capacitive loads, the gain from the
compensation node to the output is very close to unity. In this
case, C
F
is bootstrapped and does not contribute to the overall
compensation capacitance of the device. As the capacitive load
is increased, a pole is formed with the output impedance of the
output stage. This reduces the gain, and therefore, C
F
is
incompletely bootstrapped. Effectively, some fraction of C
F
contributes to the overall compensation capacitance, reducing
the unity gain bandwidth. As the load capacitance is further
increased, the bandwidth continues to fall, maintaining the
stability of the amplifier.
Power Supply Considerations
To ensure the proper operation of the AD826, connect the
positive supply before the negative supply. Also, proper power
supply decoupling is critical to preserve the integrity of high
frequency signals. In carefully laid out designs, decoupling
capacitors should be placed in close proximity to the supply
pins, while their lead lengths should be kept to a minimum.
These measures greatly reduce undesired inductive effects on
the amplifier’s response.
Though two 0.1 μF capacitors will typically be effective in
decoupling the supplies, several capacitors of different values
can be paralleled to cover a wider frequency range.
INPUT CONSIDERATIONS
An input protection resistor (R
IN
in Figure 25) is required in
circuits where the input to the AD826 will be subjected to
transient or continuous overload voltages exceeding the ±6 V
maximum differential limit. This resistor provides protection
for the input transistors by limiting their maximum base current.
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Rev. C
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