13
®
OPA634, OPA635
itself, this constraint implies that the feedback resistor R
F
can increase to several kΩ at high gains. This is acceptable
as long as the pole formed by RF and any parasitic capacitance appearing in parallel is kept out of the frequency range
of interest.
BANDWIDTH VS GAIN: NON-INVERTING OPERATION
Voltage feedback op amps exhibit decreasing closed-loop
bandwidth as the signal gain is increased. In theory, this
relationship is described by the Gain Bandwidth Product
(GBP) shown in the specifications. Ideally, dividing GBP by
the non-inverting signal gain (also called the Noise Gain, or
NG) will predict the closed-loop bandwidth. In practice, this
only holds true when the phase margin approaches 90°, as it
does in high gain configurations. At low gains (increased
feedback factors), most amplifiers will exhibit a more complex response with lower phase margin. The OPA634 and
OPA635 are compensated to give a slightly peaked response
in a non-inverting gain of 2 (Figure 1). This results in a
typical gain of +2 bandwidth of 150MHz, far exceeding that
predicted by dividing the 140MHz GBP by 2. Increasing the
gain will cause the phase margin to approach 90° and the
bandwidth to more closely approach the predicted value of
(GBP/NG). At a gain of +10, the 16MHz bandwidth shown
in the Typical Specifications is close to that predicted using
the simple formula and the typical GBP.
The OPA634 and OPA635 exhibit minimal bandwidth reduction going to +3V single supply operation as compared
with +5V supply. This is because the internal bias control
circuitry retains nearly constant quiescent current as the total
supply voltage between the supply pins is changed.
INVERTING AMPLIFIER OPERATION
Since the OPA634 and OPA635 are general purpose,
wideband voltage feedback op amps, all of the familiar op
amp application circuits are available to the designer. Figure
5 shows a typical inverting configuration where the I/O
impedances and signal gain from Figure 1 are retained in an
inverting circuit configuration. Inverting operation is one of
the more common requirements and offers several performance benefits. The inverting configuration shows improved
slew rate and distortion. It also allows the input to be biased
at VS/2 without any headroom issues. The output voltage can
be independently moved to be within the output voltage
range with coupling capacitors, or bias adjustment resistors.
In the inverting configuration, three key design consideration must be noted. The first is that the gain resistor (RG)
becomes part of the signal channel input impedance. If input
impedance matching is desired (which is beneficial whenever the signal is coupled through a cable, twisted pair, long
PC board trace or other transmission line conductor), R
G
may be set equal to the required termination value and R
F
adjusted to give the desired gain. This is the simplest
approach and results in optimum bandwidth and noise performance. However, at low inverting gains, the resultant
feedback resistor value can present a significant load to the
amplifier output. For an inverting gain of 2, setting RG to
50Ω for input matching eliminates the need for RM but
requires a 100Ω feedback resistor. This has the interesting
advantage that the noise gain becomes equal to 2 for a 50Ω
source impedance—the same as the non-inverting circuits
considered above. However, the amplifier output will now
see the 100Ω feedback resistor in parallel with the external
load. In general, the feedback resistor should be limited to
the 200Ω to 1.5kΩ range. In this case, it is preferable to
increase both the RF and RG values as shown in Figure 5, and
then achieve the input matching impedance with a third
resistor (RM) to ground. The total input impedance becomes
the parallel combination of RG and RM.
The second major consideration, touched on in the previous
paragraph, is that the signal source impedance becomes
part of the noise gain equation and hence influences the
bandwidth. For the example in Figure 5, the RM value
combines in parallel with the external 50Ω source impedance, yielding an effective driving impedance of 50Ω ||
576Ω = 26.8Ω. This impedance is added in series with R
G
for calculating the noise gain. The resultant is 2.87 for
Figure 5, as opposed to only 2 if RM could be eliminated as
discussed above. The bandwidth will therefore be lower for
the gain of –2 circuit of Figure 5 (NG = +3) than for the
gain of +2 circuit of Figure 1.
The third important consideration in inverting amplifier
design is setting the bias current cancellation resistors on the
non-inverting input (a parallel combination of RT = 263Ω).
If this resistor is set equal to the total DC resistance looking
out of the inverting node, the output DC error, due to the
input bias currents, will be reduced to (Input Offset Current)
• RF. If the 50Ω source impedance is DC-coupled in Figure
5, the total resistance to ground between the inverting input
and the source will be 401Ω. Combining this in parallel with
the feedback resistor gives the RT = 263Ω used in this
OPA63x
50Ω
R
F
750Ω
R
G
374Ω
2R
T
523Ω
R
M
57.6Ω
Source
DIS
+5V
2R
T
523Ω
R
O
50Ω
0.1µF 6.8µF
+
0.1µF
50Ω Load
FIGURE 5. Gain of –2 Example Circuit.