Introduction to Electronics

Read Chapter 1 & Chapter 2, Section 2.1-2.3

Sedra/Smiths Microelectronic Circuits

Ching-Yuan Yang
National Chung Hsing University
Department of Electrical Engineering

Electronic Circuits ()
Prof. Ching-Yuan Yang ()
Room 823 Electrical Engineering Building
Email: ycy@nchu.edu.tw
Website: http://web.nchu.edu.tw/~analog/
Text book: Microelectronic Circuits, 5e, by Sedra/Smith (Oxford 2004)
Course Assessment:
15% Assignments
80% Three Term examinations
5% Other
Course Contents:
z Introduction (Ch1, Ch2)
z Diodes (Ch3)
z Bipolar Junction Transistors (Ch5)
z MOS Field-Effect Transistors (Ch4)
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Brief history of electronics

z Identification of the electron by J.J. Thomson late in the 19th
century and the measurement of its electric charge by Robert A.
Millikan in 1909.
z Invention of vacuum tube in 1906 by Lee De Forest
z Invention of the transistor in 1947 by John Bardeen, Walter H.
Brattain, and William B. Shockley of the Bell Lab.
z Invention of integrated circuits (IC) independently by Jack Kilby
of Texas Instruments in 1958 and by Jean Hoerni and Robert
Noyce of Fairchild Semiconductor in 1959.
z Discover of Moore's law (1965): The number of transistors per
silicon chip doubles every 18 months.

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Examples of analog IC
Gyroscope system
Single-chip gyroscopic sensor
Tiny
Robust
Lower power
Angular-rate-to-voltage transducer
BiCMOS process
Chip area: 3mm 3mm
Power: 30mW @ 5V
Product by Analog Devices, USA

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Signal source
z A fundamental function of electronic circuits is to process signals.
z Signals contain information about a variety of things and activities in
our physical world. Example - information about weather: air
temperature, humidity, pressure, etc.
z To process the information by electronic systems, the signal must
first be converted into an electric signal, i.e., a voltage or current, by
a device called transducer.
z A electric signal source can be represented by either (a) Thvenin or
(b) Norton forms:

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Analog and digital signals

Analog signal :
represents the physical signal in the world
around us. A analog signal is continuous both
in time and magnitude.

Digital signal :
is a sequence of numbers. A digital signal is
discrete both in time and amplitude.

Discretized or digitized signal :

Digital signal can be converted from analog signal. As shown in Figure, at
equal intervals along the time axis, the analog signal is measured (sampled).
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Analog and digital signals

z Binary number system is most commonly used to represent the discretized
signal because it results in the simplest possible digital signals and circuits.
z The digital signals in binary systems need have only two voltage levels,
which can be labeled low and high (0 and 1). If we use N binary digits (bits)
to represent each sample of the analog signal, then the digitized sample
value can be expressed as

D = b0 20 + b1 21 + " + bN 1 2 N 1
where b0, b1, , bN-1 , denote the N bits and have values of 0 or 1,
b0 = least significant bit (LSB),
bN-1 = most significant bit (MSB).
For example the D corresponding to 15 is 1+2+4+8 , or (1 1 1 1).

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Introduction to amplifiers
Amplifier Gains
vO
(V/V)
vI
i
Current gain ( Ai ) O (A/A)
iI

Voltage gain ( Av )

Power gain ( Ap )

load power ( PL ) vOiO

=
(W/W)
input power ( PI ) vI iI

Gains defined above are ratios of similarly dimensioned

quantities and thus are dimensionless numbers.

Historically, electronic engineers are used to express

gain with a logarithmic measure as

Voltage gain in decibels = 20 log Av dB

Current gain in decibels = 20 log Ai dB
Power gain in decibels = 10 logAp dB
Power is related to voltage (or current) squared.
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Introduction to amplifiers (cont)

Amplifier power supply
dc power delivered to the amplifier:
Pdc = V1I1 + V2I2
If the power dissipated in the
amplifier circuit is denoted Pdissipated,
the power-balance equation for the
amplifier can be written as
Pdc + PI = PL + Pdissipated
PI : the power drawn from the signal source
PL : the power delivered to the load
Amplifier efficiency

PL
100
Pdc

It measures how much dc power is

converted to the power on the load.
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Introduction to amplifiers (cont)

Amplifier saturation

In order to avoid distorting the output signal

waveform, the input signal swing must be
kept within the linear range of operation:

L
L
vI +
Av
Av
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Introduction to amplifiers (cont)

Concept of biasing

Practically, an amplifier also exhibits

nonlinearities of various magnitudes.

vI (t ) = VI + vi (t )

vo (t ) = Av vi (t )

vO (t ) = VO + vo (t ) A = dvO
v
dvI at Q
A simple technique for obtaining linear amplification is to bias
the circuit to operate at a point near the middle of the transfer
characteristic. The point Q is known as the quiescent point,
the dc bias point, or simply the operating point.
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IEEE symbol convention

iC = I C + ic

Total instantaneous signal: iC

Incremental instantaneous signal: ic
DC/Biasing level: IC
Incremental peak level: Ic
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Circuit models for amplifiers

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Digital logic inverter

z The logic inverter is the most basic element in digital circuits.
z Noise Margin for high inputs: NMH = VOH VIH
z Noise Margin for low inputs: NML = VIL VOL
Voltage transfer characteristic (VTC):
The VTC of an ideal inverter:

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Digital logic inverter implementation

Transistor switches

z Basis of transistor-transistor logic (TTL)

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Digital logic inverter implementation (cont)

Complementary switches

z No static current flow

z Basis of CMOS logic
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Digital logic inverter implementation (cont)

Current steering

z The fastest inverter

z Complementary outputs
z Basis of Emitter-Coupled Logic (ECL)
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Operational amplifier
Circuit symbol:

Equivalent circuit of the ideal op amp:

Infinite input impedance

Zero output impedance
Zero common-mode gain
Infinite open loop gain A
Infinite bandwidth
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Operational amplifier (cont)

Inverting closed-loop configuration:

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Operational amplifier (cont)

Noninverting closed-loop configuration:

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Operational amplifier (cont)

Voltage follower:

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Circuit simulation using SPICE

SPICE
z
z
z
z
z

SPICE: Simulation Program with Integrated Circuited Emphasis

An open-source program developed by the U.C. Berkeley (1970s)
Computer programs to simulate the operation of electronic circuits
PSpice is a commercial PC version available from Cadence
Others: ISPice, HSpice,

In this course, .
z It is not our objectively to teach how SPICE works nor the intricacies
of using it effectively.
z Our objective is twofold:
To describe the models that are used by SPICE to represent the
various electronic devices
To illustrate how useful SPICE can be in investigating circuit
operation
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