{"id":768,"date":"2009-07-07T21:26:09","date_gmt":"2009-07-08T02:26:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.circuitdesign.info\/blog\/2009\/07\/differential-circuits-follow-up\/"},"modified":"2022-12-13T23:52:55","modified_gmt":"2022-12-14T05:52:55","slug":"differential-circuits-follow-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.circuitdesign.info\/blog\/2009\/07\/differential-circuits-follow-up\/","title":{"rendered":"Differential Circuits Follow-Up"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2>Introduction<\/h2>\n<p>You\u2019ll notice that this post has Matt Miller listed as the author. Poojan requested Matt\u2019s comments on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.circuitdesign.info\/blog\/2009\/06\/the-benefits-of-differential-circuits\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">his differential circuit post<\/a>. Poojan was impressed with my comments enough that he decided to make it a follow-up post. So, this post is co-written by both Poojan and Matt.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><a style=\"font-size: 0.6px;\" title=\"Watch Full Movie Online Streaming Online and Download\" href=\"https:\/\/movieclose.com\/\" rel=\"dofollow\">Watch Full Movie Online Streaming Online and Download<\/a><\/p>\n<h2>Gain<\/h2>\n<p>Some of you asked whether the differential circuit being biased at half the current therefore has half the transconductance, and therefore lower gain. The answer is that it depends.<br \/>\nThe single-ended circuit has an output current <code>i_o = g_m * v_i<\/code>. In many cases, the only thing this circuit can drive is a single-ended load <code>Z_L<\/code>.<br \/>\nThe differential circuit has an output current <code>i_{o+} = g_m * v_i\/2<\/code>; <code>i_{o-} = -g_m * v_i\/2<\/code>.<br \/>\nSo, the question comes down to whether we can subtract the two currents <code>i_{o+}<\/code> and <code>i_{o-}<\/code> to produce a differential current. Although one can think of it that way, it\u2019s really more accurately to define the current flowing out of one side and into the other. The current, therefore, doesn\u2019t change. However, all other things being equal, the load on the differential circuit will be <code>2Z_L<\/code>. Therefore, the gain is the same.<\/p>\n<h2>Free Lunch<\/h2>\n<p>Some of you questioned the 4x boost in dynamic range that the differential circuit gives over its single-ended counterpart. While I made some mistakes with the equations (they\u2019re fixed now), the result <em>was<\/em> correct: the differential circuit does have 6 dB higher dynamic range. Where did this come from? Well, it\u2019s the basic advantage of the differential circuit: while a single-ended circuit can only swing +\/- Vx, a differential circuit (where the output is defined as the difference of two single-ended circuits) has a swing of twice that: +\/- 2Vx. Having twice the voltage is equivalent to 4x the power (and in both cases, that\u2019s 6 dB improvement).<\/p>\n<h2>There\u2019s No Such Thing<\/h2>\n<p>If some of you feel that this can\u2019t be possible, please keep in mind the long disclaimer at the beginning of the last post: there are no universally better circuits. There are only certain circuits that are better suited for certain applications. In this case, the differential circuit gets its benefit from improved output range. However, the gain doesn\u2019t change. Therefore, there\u2019s an intrinsic assumption here: the circuit will tolerate a higher output, but there\u2019s no gain to make the output higher. We didn\u2019t intrinsically get double the gain, so we can\u2019t take advantage of the dynamic range without sticking some gain ahead of the circuit.<br \/>\nThat\u2019s requirement is perfectly fine in a lot of cases. In many cases, you already have a ton of gain and automatic gain-control (AGC) ahead of the circuit. In that case, the AGC range can be reduced (possibly improving overall performance). This is true (for example) in the baseband filter at the end of an RF line-up. For that application, the figure of merit really <em>is<\/em> dynamic range. Similarly, in an ADC, the extra dynamic range might mean more effective bits of resolution.<\/p>\n<h2>Cheap Lunch<\/h2>\n<p>We\u2019ve given the impression that the dynamic range can\u2019t be leveraged in (for example) an RF LNA. Turns out that it can\u2014for relatively cheap (although\u00a0 not for free). If one were to stick a 1:4 (impedance ratio) balun ahead of the circuit, one would get this voltage gain for relatively cheap (meaning, the cost of the balun). In many cases, some form of impedance transformer (matching network) is required anyway, so putting a balun in isn\u2019t a great cost.<br \/>\nThe balun doubles the voltage but quadruples the output impedance. This is actually a good thing: the differential circuit has 4x the input impedance of the single-ended circuit. Let\u2019s call the single-ended circuit\u2019s input impedance <code>Z_i<\/code>. The differential circuit has <code>2Z_i<\/code> input impedance on each side (we\u2019ve cut the single-ended circuit in half). However, these input impedances get stacked to form the fully differential input impedance, so we get <code>4Z_i<\/code> as the input impedance of the differential circuit:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.circuitdesign.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/07\/scan0146a.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"float: none; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; border: 0px;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.circuitdesign.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/07\/scan0146a_thumb.jpg\" alt=\"Single Ended Zin\" width=\"244\" height=\"242\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a> versus<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.circuitdesign.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/07\/scan0146b.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"float: none; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; border: 0px;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.circuitdesign.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/07\/scan0146b_thumb.jpg\" alt=\"Differential Zin (4x Single Ended)\" width=\"484\" height=\"312\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Introduction You\u2019ll notice that this post has Matt Miller listed as the author. Poojan requested Matt\u2019s comments on his differential circuit post. Poojan was impressed with my comments enough that he decided to make it a follow-up post. So, this post is co-written by both Poojan and Matt.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[147,77,88],"class_list":["post-768","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-analog-pro","tag-differential","tag-gain","tag-impedance"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/poCEy-co","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.circuitdesign.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/768","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.circuitdesign.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.circuitdesign.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.circuitdesign.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.circuitdesign.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=768"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.circuitdesign.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/768\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1199,"href":"https:\/\/www.circuitdesign.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/768\/revisions\/1199"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.circuitdesign.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=768"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.circuitdesign.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=768"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.circuitdesign.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=768"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}