It has become customary in electrical engineering to think of signal processing in terms of voltage variables to the exclusion of current variables. This tendency has resulted in voltage signal processing circuits such as voltage-controlled voltage sources (VCVS) and voltage-mode operational amplifiers. However, the VCVS operational amplifier has several limitations which prevent high performance operation. One of these limitations is that the product of the closed loop -3dB bandwidth and the closed loop voltage gain is approximately a constant. Thus, for a typical internally compensated operational amplifier the closed loop -3dB bandwidth decreases as the closed loop voltage gain increases. By taking advantage of a current-controlled current source (CCCS) to form a current-mode operational amplifier, this limitation can be overcome. / Graduation date: 1991

published_or_final_version / Electrical Engineering / Master / Master of Philosophy

Graduation date: 1998

Standard methodologies exist for testing and characterizing digital circuits but the same cannot be said of analog circuits. Though much theoretical work has been done to model the linear and nonlinear aspects of analog circuits, a firm practical background for the design of testable analog cells has yet to be set. The industry largely looks for solutions wherein some form of built in self-test (BIST) can be incorporated into the analog circuits to make the testing at the manufacturing level easy and accurate. Since the testers in the industry are generally digital, test circuits that use logic levels at the output to make measurements are attractive. This thesis examines the design of such test circuits for one specific analog circuit, the opamp. Test circuits to measure the gain, gain-bandwidth product, phase response and the slew rate of the opamp have been designed and experimental results are presented. The main advantages of these tests are that they are simple, fast, accurate and easy to incorporate in an integrated circuit. / Graduation date: 1994

Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Texas at Arlington, 2008.

Thesis--M. Phil., University of Hong Kong.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2007. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references and index.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Oregon State University, 2009. / Printout. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 80-86). Also available on the World Wide Web.

No description available.

This work contains the analysis and redesign of a translinear circuit. This circuit appeared in the article by Robert Blauschild. The Blauschild circuit was analyzed on H-SPICE, a VAX computer circuit analysis program, with Burr-Brown Integrated Circuit Process 30 models. Circuit improvement to input voltage to current converter stage and circuit simplification of the output stage were implemented and simulated in the redesign. The results of the two simulations were compared, which showed that the improvements were valid and useful. Going through this redesign cycle of circuit analysis, computer simulation and bread-boarding served as an actual design engineering application with a real problem, solution, and result scenarios.