With linear regulators, you measure dropout voltage, VIN – VOUT, at the minimum input voltage for which the IC sustains regulation. Low dropout means longer battery life, because the load circuit continues to operate while the battery discharges to a lower terminal voltage...
Articles and news - 2
Pass transistor lowers dropout voltage
5 V to 200 V Converter for APD Bias
Avalanche photodiodes require high voltage bias. Design provides 200 V from a 5 V input...
Isolated driver forms solid-state circuit breaker
The circuit allows standard TTL logic levels to safely drive a high-power dc load. The circuit provides for both signal and ground isolation as well as a solid-state circuit breaker...
Automatic load sensing saves power in high voltage converter
There are a surprising number of high output voltage applications for micropower DC/DC converter family. These applications include electroluminescent panels, specialized sensing tubes and xenon strobes...
Slow diodes or handy timing devices?
Most designers consider slowness in diodes to be an imperfection or a limitation. Why not take a more positive view of the situation...
1Hz-100MHz V-F converter
Circuit achieves a wider dynamic range and higher output frequency than any commercially available voltage to frequency converter. Its 100 MHz fullscale output is at least ten times faster than available units...
Circuit level-shifts ac signals
AC signals can emanate from many sources, and many of these sources are incompatible with the most popular interface voltages, such as TTL. A temptation always exists to capacitively couple the ac signals because capacitive coupling strips off the dc level...
My favorite design idea of all time…
The editors of EDN will tell you that the Design Ideas section is the most popular section of the website, this goes back to the print editions, where that was the first section that most if not all readers turned to first upon getting a new issue...
Turn a set/reset latch into an astable/monostable multivibrator
This Design Idea describes a simple way to form a reliable astable or monostable multivibrator from a set/reset latch. You may find it useful because it lets you minimize the number of standard digital ICs...
Set DC input-stage gain/attenuation over a 96 dB range with PWM
Pulse width modulation is a simple and inexpensive (therefore popular!) way to implement moderate performance (e.g., 8 bit resolution low speed) digital to analog conversion, but improvising cheap DACs isn’t the only thing PWM can do...