Tutorials

IC Design Tutorials

My Tutorials

• Control Theory, AC Analysis, & Compensation for Amplifiers with Feedback

- Many clarifications and corrections have been made, and important points added, in October, 2014 -

• Intuitively understand poles & zeros associated with circuit nodes.
• Easily find, understand, analyze, and modify poles & zeros.
• Fast, easy, methodical approach to compensating multi-pole/zero systems.
• Includes example compensating a bandgap reference built around an LDO-style 3-stage op-amp.
• Analyzes where to put compensation cap and how to minimize necessary cap size.
• Brief look at power supply rejection.
• Bandgap Reference Design & Layout
  • Theory, design tips, several topologies, < 1V references, layout tips.
  • Precision methods are discussed, but there are ways beyond this tutorial's scope to achieve ultra-high precision.

Appropriate use and distribution is free, but do not sell this material or claim copyrights for what I wrote. These papers are not peer-reviewed and may contain occasional errors.

Tutorials by Others

• General/Comprehensive
  • All About Circuits - Click the Textbooks button to switch volumes. "Digital" includes good ADC info.
• Compensation
  • Advanced Amplifier Feedback (AC) Analysis
• Bandgap References
  • U of Toronto Tutorial
  • Yilmazer: Simple Intro
  • Allen: PTAT, CTAT, BGR physics and several topologies
  • Stanford: BGRs and Application to Constant-gm Circuits
• Basic Electronics Tutorial Website
  • Includes very many tutorials on very relevant topics.
• Device Physics
  • Short Channel MOSFET Physics
  • BJT Physics
• Differential Amplifiers
  • See my Types of Diff Amps page for a list of URLs
• DRAM
  • Smithsonian Chips - Covers physics, application, and also FRAM
• LDO's (Low-Dropout Regulators)
  • LDO Intro & a Low-PSR Topo
  • Buy Rincon-Mora's Book - This book is a Bible for LDO design, but it is advanced. Grey & Meyer is a good book to read first.
• PLLs
  • Dean's Book
    • Per a quick glance, this looks like it might be quite good.
• Switch-Mode Power Supplies
  • Rahman - Tremendous tutorial on buck converter design. Includes very basic intro, state space transfer function, feedback and compensation, current vs voltage modes. (Designers can sometimes stabilize their converters without state space transfer function analysis, but the analysis makes the process much easier.)
  • ON Semiconductor SMPS Manual
  • Choosing the optimum switching frequency of your DC/DC converter EE Times
  • SPICE-based Averaged PWM Models
  • Compensation
    • Designing Stable Compensation Networks for Single Phase Voltage Mode Buck Regulators by Mattingly from Intersil