Application Notes (Continued)
4.2 Instrumentation Circuits
The input impedance of the previous difference amplifier is
set by the resistors R
1,R2,R3
, and R4. To eliminate the
problems of low input impedance, one way is to use a voltage follower ahead of each input as shown in the following
two instrumentation amplifiers.
4.2.1 Three-op-amp Instrumentation Amplifier
The quad LMV324 can be used to build a three-op-amp instrumentation amplifier as shown in
Figure 8
.
The first stage of this instrumentation amplifier is a
differential-input, differential-output amplifier, with two voltage followers. These two voltage followers assure that the
input impedance is over 100 MΩ. The gain of this instrumentation amplifier is set by the ratio of R
2/R1.R3
should equal
R
1
, and R4equal R2. Matching of R3to R1and R4to R2affects the CMRR. For good CMRR over temperature, low drift
resistors should be used. Making R
4
slightly smaller than R
2
and addinga trim pot equal to twice the difference between
R
2
and R4will allow the CMRR to be adjusted for optimum.
4.2.2 Two-op-amp Instrumentation Amplifier
A two-op-amp instrumentation amplifier can also be used to
make a high-input-impedance dc differential amplifier (
Fig-
ure 9
) . As in the three-op-amp circuit, this instrumentation
amplifier requires precise resistor matching for good CMRR.
R4 should equal to R1 and R3 should equal R2.
4.3 Single-Supply Inverting Amplifier
There may be cases where the input signal going into the
amplifier is negative. Because the amplifier is operating in
single supply voltage, a voltage divider using R
3
and R4is
implemented to bias the amplifier so the input signal is within
the input common-mode voltage range of the amplifier. The
capacitor C
1
is placed between the inverting input and resis-
tor R
1
to block the DC signal going into theAC signal source,
V
IN
. The values of R1and C1affect the cutoff frequency, fc
= 1/2πR
1C1
.
As a result, the output signal is centered around mid-supply
(if the voltage divider provides V
+
/2 at the non-inverting input). The output can swing to both rails, maximizing the
signal-to-noise ratio in a low voltage system.
4.4 Active Filter
4.4.1 Simple Low-Pass Active Filter
The simple low-pass filter is shown in
Figure 11
. Its low-
frequency gain (ω→0) is defined by -R
3/R1
. This allows lowfrequency gains other than unity to be obtained. The filter
has a -20dB/decade roll-off after its corner frequency fc. R
2
should be chosen equal to the parallel combination of R1and
R
3
to minimize errors due to bias current. The frequency re-
sponse of the filter is shown in
Figure 12
.
DS100060-7
DS100060-19
FIGURE 7. Difference Amplifier
DS100060-85
FIGURE 8. Three-op-amp Instrumentation Amplifier
DS100060-11
DS100060-35
FIGURE 9. Two-Op-amp Instrumentation Amplifier
DS100060-13
DS100060-20
FIGURE 10. Single-Supply Inverting Amplifier
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