Low-cost amps offer frugal signal conditioning

A new series of low-cost amplifiers operate at low voltages and consume minimal power without sacrificing the accuracy required by portable applications that need precise signal conditioning.

Analog Devices has a new series of low-cost amplifiers that operate at low voltages and consume minimal power without sacrificing the accuracy required by portable applications that need precise signal conditioning.

To extend battery life, amplifiers must offer very low operating and standby power, low-voltage operation, and rail-to-rail outputs.

Designers of portable applications, particularly in the medical instrumentation market, are under constant pressure to lower costs and extend battery life without sacrificing accuracy.

Analog Devices' new amplifiers offer the industry's best combination of high accuracy, low power, small size and low price.

The AD8538 offers the industry's best accuracy versus power among auto-zero amps on the market, and is ideal for signal paths with very low offset voltage and offset voltage drift over time and temperature.

The AD8613 family of operational amplifiers offers the industry's best combination of low noise, low power, low voltage and low price.

"Lowering costs and enabling longer battery life - without sacrificing precision - are the biggest challenges faced by designers of portable medical applications", said Steve Sockolov, Product Line Director, Precision Signal Processing Group, Analog Devices.

"These new amplifiers expand our product portfolio and meet the increasing demand for lower voltage amplifiers featuring accuracy suitable for portable medical devices".

"The new auto-zero amp is ideal for high-end portable medical instrumentation design and the family of low-noise op amps provides a low-cost solution for analogue front ends in two-cell to multicell battery-powered devices".

Requiring a supply current of only 150uA, the AD8538 offers three times better temperature drift performance compared with the closest competing device - a drift performance level equivalent to products requiring over 1mA of supply current.

Its low power and high precision makes the AD8538 well - suited for markets such as medical equipment, pressure and thermal sensors and automotive electronics.

With only 0.01uV/C offset drift, the AD8538 offers the industry's lowest offset drift at low operating current.

The device offers tremendous cost and time savings to designers as compared with a discrete system-level auto-calibration approach, which requires more complicated and costly hardware and software that can slow down time to market for new products.

The device's outstanding precision - 12uV maximum offset and just 1uV peak-peak of low-frequency noise - enable highly accurate and stable system designs without the cost, size and complexity of solutions using external auto-calibration.

The AD8613, AD8617 and AD8619 devices are single, dual and quad op amps with rail-to-rail inputs and outputs that deliver 50% lower noise and 30% lower power with twice the precision of competing devices.

Fully guaranteed low-voltage operation down to 1.8V makes the AD861x ideal for battery-operated devices, such as temperature monitors and carbon dioxide detectors, where power management and reliability are critical.

The AD8613 family of devices feature maximum supply current of only 38uA and voltage operation from 1.8 to 5V.

The devices achieve high levels of precision in consumer-medical and low-cost industrial applications with low maximum offset voltage of 2mV, ultralow maximum input bias current of 1pA and low noise of 22nV/(rt)Hz.

The devices are well suited for portable applications that require amplification while maintaining low noise throughout the signal path.

The rail-to-rail outputs make them suitable for driving ADCs (analogue-to-digital convertors) and buffering DACs (digital-to-analogue convertors) in lower power 12 to 16bit applications.

For the AD8538, typical high-resolution portable sensor applications, such as IR thermal scanners, require very low offset and offset drift to achieve accurate measurements.

Portable medical applications for the AD861x include defibrillators, thermometers, blood pressure, glucose monitors and other bedside monitors; portable consumer applications include safety/emergency equipment such as smoke and remote power line detectors.

The AD8538, available now in production quantities, is packaged in both TSOT-23 and narrow SOIC-8 packages and is priced at $0.89 per unit in 1000-piece quantities.

The single AD8613 is sampling now with production quantities available in January 2006.

The dual AD8617 and quad AD8619 are available in full production quantities now.

The AD8613 is packaged in both SC-70 and 5-lead TSOT and is priced at $0.45 per unit in 1000 piece quantities.

The AD8617 is packaged in 8-lead MSOP and 8-lead narrow SOIC and is priced at $0.70 per unit in 1000-piece quantities.

The AD8619 is packaged in 14-lead TSSOP and 14-lead SOIC and is priced at $1.10 in 1000-piece quantities.

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