Bob Cordell's Power amplifier book

Thank you to kgrlee for the explanation of the feedback resistor bypass capacitor.

I can see that this TIS transistor emitter decoupling capacitor does involve adding a zero but its effect is totally dependant on the topology surrounding it.
Yes. This is always the case cos like the feedback resistor bypass it doesn't determine the Loop Gain 'directly' like plain Miller, MIC, TPC, TMC, 'pure Cherry' etc .. but tweaks it.
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Gurus JPV & Zan, I'm itching to do some serious work along the lines you have suggested.

My $0.02 is the Excess Phase might be less of a problem if we keep loops to 3 or less active devices in their path ala Cherry.

The aim of the exercise being to understand the 'real life' issues and hopefully develop strategies to deal with them .. rather than to bolster some fancy theory.
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michaelkiwanuka said:
All the schematics I have posted so far are to illustrate specific points. Personally I would never design an amplifier in the fashion of those schematics.
It would be nice if you could post a few examples of what you consider GOOD practice instead of cr*p.

The evidence so far suggests .. for all your pontificating, you are incapable of designing power amps with even mildly acceptable stability & THD ... even in SPICE world :eek:
 
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The evidence so far suggests .. for all your pontificating, you are incapable of designing power amps with even mildly acceptable stability & THD ... even in SPICE world :eek:

What a blessed fool you are. By your own account you're a SPICE "newbie". You then, with a straight face, pompously pontificate about my abilities as an amplifier designer on the basis of SPICE which you barely know anything about. How stupid is that?

There is no fool like an old fool. :no:
 
The evidence so far suggests .. for all your pontificating, you are incapable of designing power amps with even mildly acceptable stability & THD ... even in SPICE world
Without taking sides, that's a pretty hefty comment.
Care to suggest another interpretation of MikeK's SPICE examples?[*]

I can't claim to have searched them all out but certainly ALL the ones I've been stupid enough to download and try ... have shown appalling stabiltiy & THD.

I note he tends to dismiss 'real life' examples & evidence so his SPICE models are all we have to go on. Could be my lack of facilty with LTspice of course :rolleyes:

All I'm asking is that he provides some evidence, preferably 'real life' but SPICE will do for a start, that he is 'capable'. I'm not sure, copious dubious pontificating and quoting loadsa books is 'evidence'. :)

But he's obviously a true master at semantic pedantry though its hard to see how any of it translates to good amplifier design.

And he's scaled new heights in invective too. :eek:


[*] One possibility is that Mike's examples are just to 'prove' everyone else is cerebrally challenged but I'm sure he couldn't possibly take such an offensive view ;)
 
If you introduce a resistor with the Miller capacitor, the expression for the zero becomes fz = 1/(2piCmiller(1/gm2-R))

...cos like the feedback resistor bypass it doesn't determine the Loop Gain 'directly' like plain Miller, MIC, TPC, TMC, 'pure Cherry' etc .. but tweaks it...

[lets ]... do some serious work...

I know you cherish the emitter bypass capacitor but as far as I can see, it can only put us back to where we started before we added the emitter resistor. *On reconsideration, maybe it can be useful if correctly chosen
Seems the best plan is to keep the VIS (= VAS/TIS = Very Important Section) emitter resistor low and maximise the current in the VIS, which makes sense on first principles. I have the next two weeks on holiday to re-read Cherry and see why he doesn't do this.

My $0.02 is the Excess Phase might be less of a problem if we keep loops to 3 or less active devices in their path ala Cherry.

Mike also recommends this. Nice to see you two in accord.;)
Seriously, lets keep it that way, I appreciate both your comments.
What about the proposal a few posts back to use an EF buffer on the VIS and return the Miller capacitor after the buffer rather than before?
I have never considered this, probably because Self and Cordell don't even consider it, as far as I know.
Nor do the op-amps circuits use it, also AFAIK. Does that imply it's a poor choice?

Best wishes
David
 
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If R > 1/gm2 the positive zero becomes a negative zero and can be used to cancel a pole as it is done...

Yes. Finally I understand...probably;). Thank you very much.
So, Mr Lee. The VIS emitter resistor bypass capacitor should be used with a Miller capacitor series resistor to force the zero into the LHP.
You need both to have sufficient free parameters.
Kind of chuffed to have worked it out at last, so I may have rushed and made a mistake, but it looks correct. Cherry did not pick up on this AFAIK.

Best wishes
David
 
I had the same thought. Voltage-Impedance stage. Current in, voltage out. Maybe it's going in the right direction? VYS - Voltage Admittance stage. V in, V out. I think this is close to the right way to do it.

I had an interesting idea on a shorthand way of using math symbols to represent stages, but there is no easy way to insert superscript or subscript.
 
Sorry for the long time (a few days) delay on this reply.

Actually, this is a fundamental error. Negative feedback never attempts to reduce the error voltage to zero. It merely allows that error voltage needed to realise the demanded output voltage. Note that I use "error voltage" and not "input voltage". The distinction is profound.

I was referring to the input voltage of the OTA/Opamp, which is the “error voltage” in the negative feedback context.

Nevertheless, I would be interested to examine references where the two stage Miller compensated amplifier is called an "OTA", if you can provide them. Thanks.


Well, you can for example check the books

K. Laker and W. Sansen, Design of Analog Integrated Circuits and Systems
Willy Sansen, Analog Design Essentials


If you google a bit, you’ll find many papers calling OTA to the 2 stage miller amplifier. For example:

IEEE Xplore - Fast-settling CMOS two-stage operational transconductance amplifiers and their systematic design

IEEE Xplore - A 0.5-V 8-bit 10-Ms/s Pipelined ADC in 90-nm CMOS

http://www.cecs.uci.edu/~papers/compendium94-03/papers/2003/islped03/pdffiles/14_3.pdf

So, as I said, there are many people calling OTA to the two-stage miller amplifier due to its high output impedance (at low/medium frequencies). Again, I understand you argument that the output impedance drops due the effect of the compensation capacitance. But the fact is that with a two-stage miller amplifier you cannot do something you typically do with a “standard” Opamp: apply resistive feedback. Well you can, but resistances in the kohm range would lower significantly the DC gain, which is a behavior you’d (well, I would) find unacceptable in any Opamp. That the reason why Opamps have a low impedance output buffer.

Moreover, note that nowadays OTAs are mostly used in switched capacitor circuits (inside filters, data converters, etc.), which process sampled signals. In these applications the error in the output voltage of the amplifier is set by the DC gain alone (well, ignoring settling errors). So the argument that the output impedance drops due the effect of the compensation capacitance for higher frequencies is quite irrelevant - in this context it is really behaving as transconductor. Maybe most of the people calling it and OTA are designers working in this area.


However, after having check a few books I have on microelectronics I must say that some,

A. Sedra and K. Smith, Microelectronic Circuits
P. Gray, P. Hurst, S. Lewis and R. Meyer, Analysis and Design of Analog Integrated Circuits
B. Razavi, Design of Analog CMOS Integrated Circuits

do not make any differentiation between an OTA and an Opamp: they simply call everything - amplifiers with one stage, two stage, with and without a low impedance output stage - “Opamp”. Note they are not arguing “Opamp” is the right terminology, they simply make no distinction..

The book
D. Johns and K. Martin, Analog Integrated Circuit Design
also calls everything “Opamp”, but they have a paragraph saying that “some designers use the term OTA”.

In my “professional life” I keep it simple and call everything “amplifier”;)

Regards
 
To add information to this last post, let me give some additional nice references from the web so easy to consult;

First, Laker and Sansen are explaining why to use the concept of OTA for 2stage Miller ( and others) and when to name it opamp in feedback connection; As I said, scientific littérature is in continuous evolution towards more and more structure and concepts when things becomes well studied Structured hw design do not escape to this tendency.
Two stage miller ota is NOT a way to call it, there is a reason behind

A pity that this top book is out of print.

From Berkley ( Mike the same as Gray Hurst so as I said no chapel :rolleyes::rolleyes:)
From Texas A&M

Sansen analog essentials chapter 5, 6, 7 can be downloaded by googling Sansen OTA Miller


Good reading
 

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Can we all come to an agreement that different authors and people will use differing terms to describe the same thing? This is very common in many industries and professions. Unless we are going to use Latin for a base word definition such as botany or biology or such this happens all the time.

Some may say toe-mate-o while another says toe-mot-o and some may say soda in one part of the US while another will call it pop! They are all correct as long as we all agree that we are talking about the same things.
 
Can we all come to an agreement that different authors and people will use differing terms to describe the same thing? This is very common in many industries and professions. Unless we are going to use Latin for a base word definition such as botany or biology or such this happens all the time.

Some may say toe-mate-o while another says toe-mot-o and some may say soda in one part of the US while another will call it pop! They are all correct as long as we all agree that we are talking about the same things.

Amen, thank you kindhorman. Life is too short to waste it on details of semantics and how many angles reside on the tip of a pin :).

Cheers,
Bob