Application Information (Continued)
power, higher ambient temperatures are allowed as output
power or duty cycle decreases. If the result of Equation (5) is
greater than that of Equation (6), then decrease the supply
voltage, increase the load impedance, or reduce the ambient
temperature. If these measures are insufficient, a heat sink
can be added to reduce θ
JA
. The heat sink can be created
using additional copper area around the package, with connections to the ground pin(s), supply pin and amplifier output
pins. External, solder attached SMT heatsinks such as the
Thermalloy 7106D can also improve power dissipation.
When adding a heat sink, the θ
JA
is the sum of θJC, θCS, and
θ
SA
.(θJCis the junction-to-case thermal impedance, θCSis
the case-to-sink thermal impedance, and θ
SA
is the sink-toambient thermal impedance.) Refer to the Typical Performance Characteristics curves for power dissipation information at lower output power levels.
POWER SUPPLY BYPASSING
As with any power amplifier, proper supply bypassing is
critical for low noise performance and high power supply
rejection. Applications that employ a 5V regulator typically
use a 10µF in parallel with a 0.1µF filter capacitors to stabilize the regulator’s output, reduce noise on the supply line,
and improve the supply’s transient response. However, their
presence does not eliminate the need for a local 1.0µF
tantalum bypass capacitance connected between the
LM4851’s supply pins and ground. Keep the length of leads
and traces that connect capacitors between the LM4851’s
power supply pin and ground as short as possible. Connecting a 1µF capacitor, C
B
, between the BYPASS pin and
ground improves the internal bias voltage’s stability and
improves the amplifier’s PSRR. The PSRR improvements
increase as the bypass pin capacitor value increases. Too
large, however, increases turn-on time and can compromise
the amplifier’s click and pop performance. The selection of
bypass capacitor values, especially C
B
, depends on desired
PSRR requirements, click and pop performance (as explained in the section, Proper Selection of External Components), system cost, and size constraints.
SELECTING EXTERNAL COMPONENTS
Input Capacitor Value Selection
Amplifying the lowest audio frequencies requires high value
input coupling capacitor (C
i
in Figure 1). A high value capacitor can be expensive and may compromise space efficiency
in portable designs. In many cases, however, the speakers
used in portable systems, whether internal or external, have
little ability to reproduce signals below 150Hz. Applications
using speakers with this limited frequency response reap
little improvement by using large input capacitor.
The internal input resistor (R
i
) and the input capacitor (Ci)
produce a high pass filter cutoff frequency that is found using
Equation (9).
f
c
=1/(2πRiCi) (9)
As an example when using a speaker with a low frequency
limit of 150Hz, C
i
, using Equation (9) is 0.063µF. The 0.22µF
C
i
shown in Figure 1 allows the LM4851 to drive high efficiency, full range speaker whose response extends below
40Hz.
Bypass Capacitor Value Selection
Besides minimizing the input capacitor size, careful consideration should be paid to value of C
B
, the capacitor con-
nected to the BYPASS pin. Since C
B
determines how fast
the LM4851 settles to quiescent operation, its value is critical
when minimizing turn-on pops. The slower the LM4851’s
outputs ramp to their quiescent DC voltage (nominally V
DD
/
2), the smaller the turn-on pop. Choosing C
B
equal to 1.0µF
along with a small value of C
i
(in the range of 0.1µF to
0.39µF), produces a click-less and pop-less shutdown function. As discussed above, choosing C
i
no larger than necessary for the desired bandwidth helps minimize clicks and
pops. C
B
’s value should be in the range of 5 times to 7 times
the value of C
i
. This ensures that output transients are
eliminated when power is first applied or the LM4851 resumes operation after shutdown.
LM4851
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