Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Signals
Design Note 538
Mark Thoren and Chad Steward
Introduction
Pulse width modulation (PWM) is a common technique
for generating analog voltages from a digital device such
as a microcontroller or FPGA. Most microcontrollers have
dedicated PWM generation peripherals built in, and it only
takes a few lines of RTL code to generate a PWM signal
from an FPGA. This is a simple, practical technique if
the analog signals performance requirements are not
too stringent, as only one output pin is required and the
code overhead is very low when compared to a digitalto-analog converter (DAC) with an SPI or I2C interface.
Figure1 shows a typical application, with a digital output
pin that is filtered to produce an analog voltage.
20MHz
CLOCK
12-BIT
PWM
C
5kHz
PWM
ANALOG
VOLTAGE
OUTPUT
20MHz
CLOCK
1.2Hz FILTER
12-BIT
PWM
C
DN538 F01
Figure 1. PWM-to-Analog
100k
5kHz
PWM
CMOS
BUFFER
1.3F
RLOAD
1LSB RIPPLE
1.1 SECOND
SETTLING
DN538 F02
Improved PWM-to-Analog!
The LTC 2644 and LTC2645 are dual and quad PWMto-voltage output DACs with internal 10ppm/C reference that provide true 8-, 10- or 12-bit performance
from digital PWM signals. The LTC2644 and LTC2645
overcome these problems by directly measuring the
duty cycle of the incoming PWM signal and sending the
appropriate 8-, 10- or 12-bit code to a precision DAC at
each rising edge.
L, LT, LTC, LTM, Linear Technology and the Linear logo are registered
trademarks of Linear Technology Corporation. All other trademarks are the
property of their respective owners.
PWM INPUTS
INA
VOUTA
INB
VOUTB
INC
VOUTC
IND
1.7V TO 5.5V
INA
2V/DIV
VOUTD
LTC2645
IOVCC
REF
PD
0.1F
BUFFERED
VOLTAGE
OUTPUTS
INPUT: 1V TO 5.5V
OUTPUT: 1.25V
2.7V TO 5.5V
VCC
GND
IDLSEL
0.1F
REFSEL
0.1F
VOUTA
500mV/DIV
GND
DN538 F03b
20s/DIV
DN538 F03a
C3
0.1F
C4
0.1F
0.1F
4.7F
2.2k
IOVCC
PD
INA
INB
0.1F
DAC A
VOUTA
10k
ILM
143k
DAC B
VOUTB
PGOOD INTVCC
LTC3850EUF
10k
0.1F
PWM TO
BINARY
VIN
RJK0305DPB
TG1
BOOST1
FREQ
0.1F
2.2H
0.008k
SW1
VOUTB = Hi-Z
1nF
CMDSH-3
100k
REF
LTC2644-12
PWM TO
BINARY
VIN
6.5V
TO 14V
3.32k
VOUT
3.3V 10%
RJK0301DPB
BG1
PGND
GND
1nF
10k
10k
SENSE1+
ITH1
500kHz
100pF
MODE/PLLIN
RUN1
1nF
SENSE1
TKSS1
10nF
10k
VFB1
SGND
15pF
63.4k
20k
DN538 F04
www.linear.com/LTC2644