You are on page 1of 3

Now, I'd like to introduce the

operational amplifier, which is going to


be the building block for the guitar
amplifier that we're going to build later
on.
Now, the model for a operational
amplifier, or op-amp for short, is a
simple dependent voltage source model.
So here's our model for an op-amp.
Now it's beyond the scope of this course
to really talk about what's inside an
op-amp.
There's some number of you know, 25 to to
a few hundred transistors on a integrated
circuit inside a real op-amp.
But we're going to just deal with an
idealized model for how the op-amp
operates, so that we can then build it
into circuits and analyze them and
predict the behavior.
Now, the op-amp has, there's an input
side and there's an output side.
And, the input inside there are two
terminals, there is a plus terminal and a
minus terminal.
And there's going to be a voltage at the
plus terminal, VP; VN at the minus
terminal.
And then, there's going to be a current,
iP and iN, flowing into those two
terminals.
now, internal to the op-amp there is some
internal s- input resistance, RI, that
connects VP and VN.
Now, the output side of the op-amp is
something here that represented this
diamond that is a dependent voltage that
is some number A, which is the game of
the loop end of the op-amp times the
voltage difference between those two
terminals.
So, this is just the definition of what
this op-amp does.
It produces a voltage and it's output
that is proportional to the voltage
difference at the 2 input terminals.
And there is an internal output
resistance in the op-amp as well, and
then, the output voltage I'll represent
with vO, and there's some output current
of the op-amp.
So, the op-amp, the key element is this
dependent voltage sources.
The voltage of this source depends upon
this voltage difference.
Now, a real op-amp typical values are the
input resistance may range between a
megaohm to teraohm for certain
specialized types of op-amps.
So this is typically a very large input

resistance, so there's going to be very


small amounts of current flowing into the
input.
The output resistance on the other hand
is typically fairly small maybe between
10 and 100 ohms, and the gain, the open
loop gain is typically very large.
maybe from 100,000 to 100 million.
Now, the key to the op-amp is that it has
this very high input impedance and it has
a very high gain.
And so, it's going to draw very little
current at it's input, but it's going to
be able to provide a lot of current at
its output.
And so, that's how you're going to get
gain out of these sorts of devices.
and don't worry, this gain seems like a
very large number, but the whole key to
using op-amps is employ feedback.
And the gain of the overall circuit is
going to depend upon the components you
use in the feedback network, and we're
going to talk quite a bit about some of
those different configurations.
Okay now, the operational amplifier is an
active device, which means that you have
to provide power to it to make it work,
and the power supply that you connect to
the op-amp is typically going to be
limited to a few volts.
And in the case of the amplifier that
we're building, it's a 12 volt DC power
supply.
Now, the output of the op-amp can't
exceed the voltage of the power supply.
So the fact that the op-amp has a very
large.
Internal gain, open loop gain, and the,
that the output is limited to the power
supply, means that here we have this
dependent voltage source.
So the output voltage is going to be the
open loop gain times the difference of
the voltage at the positive and negative
terminals.
This is a big number this is limited to
the power supply.
That means that VP and VN have to be very
close together in voltage.
So that's the first observation about
this.
Now, we're going to introduce an
idealized op-amp model, which it seems so
simple, it's hard to see how it's going
to be useful.
But we'll see that it's perfectly
adequate for analyzing the kinds of
surfaces that we'll build later on.
So in the idealized op-amp model we're

going to say well, the game is so big.


That we're just going to assume it goes
to infinity, and then that implies that
VP has to approach VN and so we're going
to assume that VP equals VN.
And then the other part of the idealized
op-amp assumption is that the input
resistance is so large that there's no
current going into either input terminal.
So, iP and iN are both 0.
And it turns out that this very simple
model is perfectly fine and adequate for
analyzing a lot of the op-amp circuits
and, in particular, the two that we are
going to take a look at now.

You might also like