Building on last month’s discussion of resistor noise, let’s check out some basics of amplifier noise. The non-inverting op amp configuration is most common for low noise applications so we’ll make ...

Operational amplifiers (commonly called op amps) are a ubiquitous building block for designing electronic circuits. Today, these devices are fabricated as small integrated circuits, but the concept ...

My hands-on introduction to operational amplifiers was in 1969 while in the army as a junior scientist in the Atmospheric Science Laboratory at the White Sands Proving Grounds. We had taken a ...

In the last Circuit VR we looked at some basic op amp circuits in a simulator, including the non-inverting amplifier. Sometimes you want an amplifier that inverts the signal. That is a 5V input ...

In a balanced op-amp circuit, the op-amp inputs see equal impedances looking into the circuit. Balanced circuits provide better performance by cancelling some input errors and have a simple R F /R I ...

Op-amps are among the most widely used electronic devices, and are designed into many consumer, industrial, and scientific devices. General purpose, standard op amps sell for well under one dollar.

If you’ve ever wondered why an op amp has the little plus and minus symbols on it, its because at the heart of it, the device is a differential amplifier. The problem is that — ideally, at least — it ...