Hickman's Analog and RF Circuits

309 Pages·1998·23.33 MB·English

by  Ian Hickman EUR.ING BSc Hons C. Eng MIEE MIEEE

Hickman's Analog and RF Circuits
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Hickman's Analog and RF Circuits
Ian Hickman
BSc (Hons), C. Eng., MIEE, MIEEE
Newoes
Newnes
An imprint of Butterworth-Heinemann
Linacre House, Jordan Hill, Oxford OX2 8DP
A division of Reed Educational and Professional Publishing Ltd
~,A member of the Reed Elsevier plc group
OXFORD BOSTON JOHANNESBURG
MELBOURNE NEW DELHI SINGAPORE
First published 1998
(cid:14)9 Ian Hickman 1998
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England W 1P 9HE.
Applications for the copyright holder's written permission to
reproduce any part of this publication should be addressed to the
publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British
Library.
ISBN 0 7506 3742 0
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of
Congress.
Typeset by Vision Typesetting
Printed and bound by Antony Rowe Ltd, Eastbourne
Transferred to digital print on demand, 2005
Contents
Preface vI~1176
Part 1 General analog circuitry
1 Voltage references
Oct. 1991 pp. 845-846
2 Versatile twin amplifier has many uses
Dec. 1993 pp. 1044-1048
3 Differentiating op-amps 19
April 1994 pp. 322-325
4 Current conveyor ICs - a new building block 27
May 1994 pp. 402-405
5 Single-pot polarity and gain adjustment 38
Aug. 1994 p. 688
6 LCR measuring transformed 39
Nov. 1994 pp. 931-93 4
7 Cautionary tales for circuit designers 50
Nov. 1994 pp. 926-930
8 Analog signal processing 62
Aug. 1995 pp. 691-695
Sept. 1995 pp. 787-791
9 Reflections on opto-electronics 87
Nov. 1995 pp. 9 70-9 74
Part 2 Audio
10 Low distortion audio oscillator 103
June 1994 pp. 370-376
11 MOSFET stabilises Wien amplitude 118
Sept. 1994 p. 786
vi Contents
12 High-performance THD meter 120
Jan. 1996 pp. 52-55
13 Listening for clues 131
Jul. /Aug. 1996 pp. 596-598
Part 3 RF
14 White noise- white knight 141
Nov. 1993 pp. 956-959
15 Ready to use RF amplifiers 151
Feb. 1994 pp. 130-134
16 Synchronous oscillators: alternative to PLL? 162
June 1994 pp. 490-494
17 The ins and outs of oscillator action 172
J@ 1994 pp. 586-589
18 The transformer-ratio-arm-bridge 182
Aug. 1994 pp. 670-672
19 Smaller steps to better performance 190
Oct. 1994 pp. 842-846
20 Tweaking the diode detector 198
Feb. 1995 pp. 122-126
21 Oscillating at UHF 208
May 1995 pp. 418-421
22 Modulating linearly 218
J@ 1995 pp. 610-613
23 Sweeping to VHF 229
Oct. 1995 pp. 823-830
Part 4 Basic principles
24 Charting RF performance 245
March I994 pp. 256-260
25 Magic numbers in electronics 255
Sept. 1994 pp. 730-733
26 Harmonising theory with practice 263
Dec. 1994 pp. 998-1002
27 Analysing waveforms in the practical world 272
Jan. 1995 pp. 74-77
282
28 Sinewaves step by step
March 1995 pp. 215-218
290
29 Is matching easy?
Dec. 1995 pp. 1074-1076
Index 296
Preface
I have been writing articles for magazines since the early 1970s, and many
of these have been published in Electronics World (founded in 1911 as The
Marconigraph but known for most of its life as Wireless World). This is
undoubtedly the foremost electronics magazine in the UK, being widely
read by professional electronics engineers on the one hand, and the more
advanced electronics enthusiasts and hobbyists on the other, both in the
UK and throughout many countries of the world, English-speaking and
otherwise. A collection of these articles was published in 1995, under the
title Analog Circuits Cookbook. This proved very popular, and the present
companion volume is the result of a suggestion that further articles of mine
from Electronics World should likewise be republished. Most but not all in
this present collection of articles were published since the preparation of
the earlier volume. And all appeared under the name Ian Hickman except
two, which originally appeared under other pen names.
Inevitably, in the preparation for publication of a magazine which
appears every month, the occasional 'typo' crept into the articles as
published, whilst the need to adjust articles to fit the space available led to
the occasional pruning of text. As in the previous volume, the opportunity
has been taken to restore the excised material, whilst it is hoped that most if
not all errors in the articles as published have been identified and correc-
ted. Each article has been prefaced with a brief introduction, indicating the
contents and its general drift.
By and large, each of the articles deals with one or other of my two main
areas of expertise - general analog electronics, and RF. But a significant
minority deal with the theory behind the various practical areas of circuit
design or operation. Explanatory articles of this sort have long been a
feature of Electronics World and the former 14areless World. For many years,
such articles appeared from time to time from the pen of one 'Cathode
viii Preface
Ray', who had the knack of explaining things clearly, without resort to
extensive mathematical treatment. These articles were always much ap-
preciated by readers, and it is an open secret that the author was none
other than that well-known writer on electronics, M G Scroggie. To some
extent, it seems that the mantle of Cathode Ray has latterly fallen on my
shoulders; at least, I hope that the articles in this volume dealing with the
fundamentals of electronics will prove both interesting and easily assimil-
able.
The articles have been grouped in four sections: General analog cir-
cuitry, Audio, RF and Basic principles. The latter section contains the
'Cathode Ray'-style explanatory articles, though it must be said that to
some extent any classification scheme must be arbitrary- some articles
could equally well be included under two if not three of the four groupings
mentioned above. But that is neither here nor there; the important things
are the articles themselves. So now, please read on ....
Ian Hickman, 1997
Part 1
G E N E RAL ANALOG C IRC U ITRY