1587457092 (1)
1587457092 (1)
1587457092 (1)
As its name implies, the Op-amp Integrator is an operational amplifier circuit that
performs the mathematical operation of Integration, that is we can cause the output to
respond to changes in the input voltage over time as the op-amp integrator produces
an output voltage which is proportional to the integral of the input voltage.
In other words the magnitude of the output signal is determined by the length of time a
voltage is present at its input as the current through the feedback loop charges or
discharges the capacitor as the required negative feedback occurs through the capacitor.
When a step voltage, Vin is firstly applied to the input of an integrating amplifier, the
uncharged capacitor C has very little resistance and acts a bit like a short circuit allowing
maximum current to flow via the input resistor, Rin as potential difference exists between
the two plates. No current flows into the amplifiers input and point X is a virtual earth
resulting in zero output. As the impedance of the capacitor at this point is very low, the gain
ratio of XC/RIN is also very small giving an overall voltage gain of less than one, ( voltage
follower circuit ).
As the feedback capacitor, C begins to charge up due to the influence of the input voltage,
its impedance Xc slowly increase in proportion to its rate of charge. The capacitor charges
up at a rate determined by the RC time constant, ( τ ) of the series RC network. Negative
feedback forces the op-amp to produce an output voltage that maintains a virtual earth at
the op-amp’s inverting input.
Since the capacitor is connected between the op-amp’s inverting input (which is at virtual
ground potential) and the op-amp’s output (which is now negative), the potential
voltage, Vc developed across the capacitor slowly increases causing the charging current to
decrease as the impedance of the capacitor increases. This results in the ratio
of Xc/Rin increasing producing a linearly increasing ramp output voltage that continues to
increase until the capacitor is fully charged.
At this point the capacitor acts as an open circuit, blocking any more flow of DC current.
The ratio of feedback capacitor to input resistor ( XC/RIN ) is now infinite resulting in
infinite gain. The result of this high gain (similar to the op-amps open-loop gain), is that the
output of the amplifier goes into saturation as shown below. (Saturation occurs when the
output voltage of the amplifier swings heavily to one voltage supply rail or the other with
little or no control in between).
The rate at which the output voltage increases (the rate of change) is determined by the
value of the resistor and the capacitor, “RC time constant“. By changing this RC time
constant value, either by changing the value of the Capacitor, C or the Resistor, R, the time
in which it takes the output voltage to reach saturation can also be changed for example.
If we apply a constantly changing input signal such as a square wave to the input of
an Integrator Amplifier then the capacitor will charge and discharge in response to
changes in the input signal. This results in the output signal being that of a sawtooth
waveform whose output is affected by the RC time constant of the resistor/capacitor
combination because at higher frequencies, the capacitor has less time to fully charge. This
type of circuit is also known as a Ramp Generator and the transfer function is given below.
But dQ/dt is electric current and since the node voltage of the integrating op-amp at its
inverting input terminal is zero, X = 0, the input current I(in) flowing through the input
resistor, Rin is given as:
Assuming that the input impedance of the op-amp is infinite (ideal op-amp), no current
flows into the op-amp terminal. Therefore, the nodal equation at the inverting input
terminal is given as:
From which we derive an ideal voltage output for the Op-amp Integrator as:
In the next tutorial about Operational Amplifiers, we will look at another type of
operational amplifier circuit which is the opposite or complement of the Op-amp
Integrator circuit above called the Differentiator Amplifier.
As its name implies, the differentiator amplifier produces an output signal which is the
mathematical operation of differentiation, that is it produces a voltage output which is
proportional to the input voltage’s rate-of-change and the current flowing through the
input capacitor.
Op-amp Differentiator Circuit
The input signal to the differentiator is applied to the capacitor. The capacitor blocks any
DC content so there is no current flow to the amplifier summing point, X resulting in zero
output voltage. The capacitor only allows AC type input voltage changes to pass through
and whose frequency is dependant on the rate of change of the input signal.
At low frequencies the reactance of the capacitor is “High” resulting in a low gain ( Rƒ/Xc )
and low output voltage from the op-amp. At higher frequencies the reactance of the
capacitor is much lower resulting in a higher gain and higher output voltage from the
differentiator amplifier.
However, at high frequencies an op-amp differentiator circuit becomes unstable and will
start to oscillate. This is due mainly to the first-order effect, which determines the
frequency response of the op-amp circuit causing a second-order response which, at high
frequencies gives an output voltage far higher than what would be expected. To avoid this
the high frequency gain of the circuit needs to be reduced by adding an additional small
value capacitor across the feedback resistor Rƒ.
Ok, some math’s to explain what’s going on!. Since the node voltage of the operational
amplifier at its inverting input terminal is zero, the current, i flowing through the capacitor
will be given as:
The charge on the capacitor equals Capacitance times Voltage across the capacitor
Therefore, the output voltage Vout is a constant –Rƒ*C times the derivative of the input
voltage Vin with respect to time. The minus sign (–) indicates a 180o phase shift because
the input signal is connected to the inverting input terminal of the operational amplifier.
One final point to mention, the Op-amp Differentiator circuit in its basic form has two
main disadvantages compared to the previous operational amplifier integrator circuit. One
is that it suffers from instability at high frequencies as mentioned above, and the other is
that the capacitive input makes it very susceptible to random noise signals and any noise or
harmonics present in the source circuit will be amplified more than the input signal itself.
This is because the output is proportional to the slope of the input voltage so some means
of limiting the bandwidth in order to achieve closed-loop stability is required.
In the RC Oscillator tutorial we saw that a number of resistors and capacitors can be
connected together with an inverting amplifier to produce an oscillating circuit.
ADVERTISING
One of the simplest sine wave oscillators which uses a RC network in place of the
conventional LC tuned tank circuit to produce a sinusoidal output waveform, is called
a Wien Bridge Oscillator.
The Wien Bridge Oscillator is so called because the circuit is based on a frequency-
selective form of the Wheatstone bridge circuit. The Wien Bridge oscillator is a two-
stage RC coupled amplifier circuit that has good stability at its resonant frequency, low
distortion and is very easy to tune making it a popular circuit as an audio frequency
oscillator but the phase shift of the output signal is considerably different from the
previous phase shift RC Oscillator.
The Wien Bridge Oscillator uses a feedback circuit consisting of a series RC circuit
connected with a parallel RC of the same component values producing a phase delay or
phase advance circuit depending upon the frequency. At the resonant frequency ƒr the
phase shift is 0o. Consider the circuit below.
It can be seen that at very low frequencies the phase angle between the input and output
signals is “Positive” (Phase Advanced), while at very high frequencies the phase angle
becomes “Negative” (Phase Delay). In the middle of these two points the circuit is at its
resonant frequency, (ƒr) with the two signals being “in-phase” or 0o. We can therefore
define this resonant frequency point with the following expression.
Wien Bridge Oscillator Frequency
• Where:
• ƒr is the Resonant Frequency in Hertz
• R is the Resistance in Ohms
• C is the Capacitance in Farads
We said previously that the magnitude of the output voltage, Vout from the RC network is
at its maximum value and equal to one third (1/3) of the input voltage, Vin to allow for
oscillations to occur. But why one third and not some other value. In order to understand
why the output from the RC circuit above needs to be one-third, that is 0.333xVin, we have
to consider the complex impedance (Z = R ± jX) of the two connected RC circuits.
We know from our AC Theory tutorials that the real part of the complex impedance is the
resistance, R while the imaginary part is the reactance, X. As we are dealing with capacitors
here, the reactance part will be capacitive reactance, Xc.
The RC Network
If we redraw the above RC network as shown, we can clearly see that it consists of two RC
circuits connected together with the output taken from their junction. Resistor R1 and
capacitor C1 form the top series network, while resistor R2 and capacitor C2 form the
bottom parallel network.
Therefore the total DC impedance of the series combination (R1C1) we can call, ZS and the
total impedance of the parallel combination (R2C2) we can call, ZP. As ZS and ZP are
effectively connected together in series across the input, VIN, they form a voltage divider
network with the output taken from across ZP as shown.
Lets assume then that the component values of R1 and R2 are the same at: 12kΩ,
capacitors C1 and C2 are the same at: 3.9nF and the supply frequency, ƒ is 3.4kHz.
Series Circuit
The total impedance of the series combination with resistor, R1 and capacitor, C1 is simply:
We now know that with a supply frequency of 3.4kHz, the reactance of the capacitor is the
same as the resistance of the resistor at 12kΩ. This then gives us an upper series
impedance ZS of 17kΩ.
For the lower parallel impedance ZP, as the two components are in parallel, we have to
treat this differently because the impedance of the parallel circuit is influenced by this
parallel combination.
Parallel Circuit
The total impedance of the lower parallel combination with resistor, R2 and capacitor, C2 is
given as:
At the supply frequency of 3400Hz, or 3.4kHz, the combined DC impedance of the RC
parallel circuit becomes 6kΩ (R||Xc) with the vector sum of this parallel impedance being
calculated as:
So we now have the value for the vector sum of the series impedance: 17kΩ, ( ZS = 17kΩ )
and for the parallel impedance: 8.5kΩ, ( ZP = 8.5kΩ ). Therefore the total output
impedance, Zout of the voltage divider network at the given frequency is:
Then at the oscillation frequency, the magnitude of the output voltage, Vout will be equal
to Zout x Vin which as shown is equal to one third (1/3) of the input voltage, Vin and it is
this frequency selective RC network which forms the basis of the Wien Bridge
Oscillator circuit.
If we now place this RC network across a non-inverting amplifier which has a gain
of 1+R1/R2 the following basic Wien bridge oscillator circuit is produced.
The frequency of oscillations for the Wien Bridge Oscillator was given as 5200 Hertz. If
resistors R1 = R2 and capacitors C1 = C2 and we assume a value for the feedback capacitors
of 3.0nF, then the corresponding value of the feedback resistors is calculated as:
For sinusoidal oscillations to begin, the voltage gain of the Wien Bridge circuit must be
equal too or greater than 3, ( Av ≥ 3 ). For a non-inverting op-amp configuration, this value
is set by the feedback resistor network of R3 and R4 and is given as:
If we choose a value for resistor R3 of say, 100kΩ’s, then the value of resistor R4 is
calculated as:
While a gain of 3 is the minimum value required to ensure oscillations, in reality a value a
little higher than that is generally required. If we assume a gain value of 3.1 then
resistor R4 is recalculated to give a value of 47kΩ. This gives the final Wien Bridge
Oscillator circuit as: