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Edited by Brad Thompson

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Impedance transformer flags failed fuse

Kevin Ackerley, Future Electronics, Vancouver, BC, Canada
C2
igure 1 depicts a circuit that detects

F
VCC 5-TO-1 TOROIDAL
10 nF CONNECTOR TRANSFORMER
the opening of a miniature circuit
breaker or high-rupture-capability R1 TO LOAD
100k CIRCUIT
fuse in a high-reliability telecommunica- R5
+ L2
tions power supply. The circuit generates IC1 3.3k L1
AD8606
an alarm when a failure changes the im- _ C4 T1
pedance of an electromagnetic sensor. R2
R4 470 nF
10k
Traditional fault-detection circuits sense 100k
the voltage difference developed across VCC
LOGIC
an open fuse, leakage current flowing D1 C3
OUT
100 nF
through a fused circuit, or closure of an R3
1N4148
D3 R9
auxiliary (volts-free) contact by an actu- 470 +
IC2 1N4148 47k
D2
ator fuse. All three methods suffer from 1N4148 R6 AD8606 Q1
_
disadvantages: Voltage-difference circuits C1 100k R7 R8 C5 2N3904
100 nF 100 nF
can introduce unacceptable delays as long 4.7k 10k

as 30 minutes because the system’s bat-

teries sustain the bus voltage. Leakage-
current sensors rely on the presence
of a load that may not be present un- Figure 1 This sensor circuit operates from a single 5V power supply.
der certain conditions. Adding auxiliary
miniature-circuit-breaker support cir- Under normal operation, an intact fuse which in turn drives a peak detector
cuits or special high-rupture-capability or closed circuit breaker completes a low- formed by D3 and C5. Transistor Q1 satu-
indicator fuses and their connectors can impedance path through T1’s single-turn rates and provides a logic-low signal to an
significantly increase system cost. primary (sense) winding. Transformer external alarm. Figure 2 shows a typical
Capacitor C4 and the secondary in- action presents a low impedance at the application for sensing backup-battery-
ductance, L2, of transformer T1 resonate junction of C2, C4, and R5 and reduces the circuit failure.
at approximately 42 kHz, a frequency that loop gain around IC1 to an amount To design transformer T1, you calcu-
minimizes noise production in the audio, insufficient to sustain
RF, and psophometric noise bands. Op- oscillation.
erational amplifier IC1 and associated When a fault occurs
TOROIDAL
components form an ac-coupled posi- and interrupts current TRANSFORMER
SYSTEM EARTH
tive-feedback amplifier with a gain of 20. through T1’s primary
winding, its secondary +
BATTERY CUSTOMER'S
STRING 1 + L0AD
impedance increases,
Impedance transformer flags allowing full loop gain – RECTIFIER 1
failed fuse ........................................................67 and permitting IC1 to
Digital waveform generator provides oscillate at 42 kHz, LVD1
flexible frequency tuning for which L2 and C4 deter- BACKPLANE FUSE LOAD FUSE
sensor measurement ....................................68 mine. Under fault con-
Battery-operated remote-temperature ditions, T1’s turns ratio BATTERY SHUNT

sensor drives 4- to 20-mA current loop ....70 injects less than 10 mV LOAD SHUNT LVD2

of wideband conduct-
Precision current source
is software-programmable ..........................72
ed noise into the dc
bus. Capacitor C3 The system wiring diagram shows transformer
Publish your Design Idea in EDN. See the
couples the oscil- Figure 2
What’s Up section at www.edn.com.
T1’s primary winding. Low-voltage-disconnect
lating signal to IC2, a units LVD1 and LVD2 isolate the 48V battery or the customer’s
gain-of-3 amplifier, load for maintenance.
www.edn.com December 17, 2004 | edn 67
design
ideas
TOROIDAL CORE

late the required impedance and turns PLAN CONNECTOR

ratio. Equation 1 describes the basic
transformer relationship:

(1)

ELEVATION
where Z1 is the impedance of the primary
winding, Z2 is the impedance of the sec-
ondary winding N1 is the number of pri-
mary turns, and N2 is the number of sec-
ondary turns.
Figure 3
Under normal operation with
current flowing in the primary winding, The primary winding (battery cable) passes through transformer T1’s center.
the secondary impedance comprises the
low primary-side impedance plus T1’s teration of T1’s design, but if that data is Also, select a core material that doesn’t
leakage reactance. When no current unavailable, you can use Equation 3 to saturate at full primary current.
flows in the primary winding, the num- calculate the inductance. Note that the core’s central area must
ber of turns in the secondary and the provide clearance for the battery cable
toroidal core AL (inductance per turn) (3) (primary winding) and secondary wind-
determine the secondary winding L2’s ing. This application uses a Philips 3C85
inductance and number of turns per where
e, the effective permeability, equals toroidal ferrite core (part no. TN 16/9.6/
Equation 2: the magnetic constant, 4107Hm1, I 6.3-3C85) with a secondary winding com-
is the path length, and A is the cross-sec- prising five turns of 0.2-mm2 insulated
(2) tional area in millimeters squared. copper wire. (Philips, however, has dis-
Select a core that presents a high val- continued the 3C85 ferrite core. Ferrox-
where N2 is the number of turns around ue of inductance to ensure that the dif- cube’s type 3C90 ferrite may serve as a re-
the toroidal core. ference between an open and a closed placement. Specifications are available at
Ferrite-core manufacturers publish in- primary circuit causes a large change in www.ferroxcube.com.) Figure 3 shows the
ductance-per-turndata that simplifies al- relative secondary-winding impedance. completed transformer.왏

Digital waveform generator provides flexible

frequency tuning for sensor measurement
Colm Slattery, Analog Devices, Limerick, Ireland
ariable-resistance sen- frequency and measuring

V
SENSOR ASSEMBLY MOVING OBJECT
sors convert a fixed dc ex- changes in the phase or ampli-
citation voltage or current tude of output voltage V2 with
into a current or voltage that’s a respect to excitation voltage
straightforward func- C L V1. However, this approach
Figure 1
tion of the quantity un- limits the sensor’s dynamic
V1 REFERENCE
dergoing measurement. In an- VOLTAGE range and resolution.
EXCITATION
other class of sensors, moving VOLTAGE As an alternative, you can
objects or fluids produce a sen- drive the sensor with a swept-
R V2 SENSOR
sor signal by altering an LC cir- OUTPUT frequency ac source that tracks
cuit’s inductance or capacitance. the sensor’s resonant-frequen-
Figure 1 shows a basic ac-driven cy variation. Figure 2 shows
tuned-circuit proximity sensor, The amplitude and phase of the resonant-circuit sensor’s output one approach in which IC1, a
L and C, and sampling resistor, voltage, V2, vary with moving object’s position. DDS (direct-digital synthesis)
R. Under static conditions, L and device, produces a sine-wave
C resonate and provide maximum im- C varies and alters the circuit’s resonant excitation voltage. Lowpass filter IC2 re-
pedance at one frequency. As an object frequency. You can derive the object’s po- moves clock artifacts and harmonics, and
approaches the sensor, the value of L or sition by exciting the sensor with a fixed amplifier IC3 drives the sensor. Amplifi-
68 edn | December 17, 2004 www.edn.com
design
ideas
er IC4 boosts the sensor’s output voltage,
V2, and drives IC5, a dual-channel, 12-bit VDD
AMPLIFIER
ADC,which simultaneously samples and
CLOCK
digitizes reference voltage V1 and IC4’s IC1 VOUT IC2 IC3
AD9833 LOWPASS AD8XX
output. IC5, a DSP-capable microcon- FILTER
SCLK FSYNC SDI
troller, analyzes the sensor output’s am-
plitude and phase, setting the frequency VDD V1 REFERENCE
of IC1 via alternate programming of ei- VDD VOLTAGE

ther of IC1’s dual frequency-control reg- VDRIVE SENSOR

isters. One of IC6’s serial ports delivers IC5
SPI
position data to an external controller. DR0 DOA VA1
IC6 DR1 DOB
Using a DDS/DSP combination offers ADSP-218X SCLKO SCLK VA2 IC4 V2
considerable flexibility when using var- SERIAL AD8XX
DATA SERIAL PORT 0 TFSO CS
SIGNAL
ious types of sensors. For example, cer- OUT AD7866 VOLTAGE
tain sensors require a relatively narrow AMPLIFIER

but high-resolution range of

Figure 2
excitation frequencies, and
others may work best with broadly swept A swept-frequency source and a DSP controller combine to offer a versatile sensor-
excitation.왏 excitation system.

Battery-operated remote-temperature sensor

drives 4- to 20-mA current loop
Scot Lester, Texas Instruments, Dallas, TX
ou can remotely measure temper- TPS62300 series of ICs, for example, con- In the sample circuit, which occupies

Y ature using a 4- to 20-mA current

loop as long as 4000 feet and a bat-
tery-powered, white-light LED driver.
You usually configure this equipment to
provide a programmable, constant cur-
rent to an LED from a battery source. The
verts a battery voltage of 2.7 to 6.5V into
a constant current, which you program
using an external resistor and voltage on
its ISET pin. The current that normally
drives the LED instead powers the loop
(Figure 1).
50 mm2, the LED driver drives the 4- to
20-mA current loop proportionate to a
sensed temperature of 10C at 4 mA
and 50C at 20 mA. The driver applies
0.6V to the ISET pin and monitors current
flow from the pin. This current is multi-

V+ V+
R1
2 3 VREF 51.1k V+
IC2
IN OUT
0.1
F
R2 0.1
F
29.4k IC4
1
F
3 RISET TPS60230RGT
+ 5
1 6.49k 1
IC3 I
4 _ VISET 2 SET 16
EN2
V+ 2 3 15
EN1
4 14
GND
5 13
4 2 VIN
R3 R4
IC1 1 150k 100k 6
5 12
D1 C2
11
C8 C1
0.015
F 7
PGND 0.47
F 0.47
F
10
C1+
8 V 9
OUT C2+
GND
17

1
F
Figure 1 TWISTED PAIR
RECEIVER
In this circuit, the LED driver drives the 4- to 20-mA current loop propor-
100
tionate to a sensed temperature of 10C at 4 mA and 50C at 20 mA.

70 edn | December 17, 2004 www.edn.com

design
ideas
plied by 260 and mirrored to the LED
drive output:
Because resistor RISET, which is tied to
the ISET pin, is fixed in the example, the
output current is proportional to the
voltage, VISET, which the output of op
amp IC3 determines. Using a 6.49-k re-
sistor for RISET means that VISET needs to
be 0.1V to provide 20 mA of loop current
and 0.5V to provide 4 mA.
The TMP36 temperature sensor, IC1,
provides 750 mV of output at 25C and
varies its output voltage by 10 mV/C.
The output of the TMP36 is 0.4V at
10C and 1V at 50C. Because these
voltages do not directly match the volt-
age requirements of VISET, you use a
REF2912 voltage reference, IC2, with the
OPA374 op amp to scale the output of
the TMP36 to the required voltage for the
LED driver, IC4. In general terms, the cur-
rent in the current loop for the circuit is:
Substituting for the component values
shown in the figure yields:
The output of the LED driver can drive
loops with as much as 180 of resistance
with battery voltages as low as 2.7V.
Therefore, the LED driver can drive more
than 1500 feet of 24 AWG or 4000 feet of
20 AWG twisted-pair wire with a 100
load resistor at the receiver. You can
achieve much longer distances with high-
er battery voltages. Because this circuit
powers the current loop, the battery life
for these circuits depends on the meas-
ured temperature. For the circuit shown,
a loop current of 13.3 mA corresponds
to a measured temperature of 25C.
Therefore, using two AA alkaline batter-
ies in series should provide more than 120
hours of remote-temperature monitoring
at room temperature. The accuracy for
the circuit is about 2.5% of full scale with-
out any calibration. For tighter accuracy,
reduce the range of the measured tem-
perature or calibrate the output.왏

Precision current source is

software-programmable
Joe Neubauer, Maxim Integrated Products Inc, Sunnyvale, CA
ith the addition of a few inex- to these devices, besides the hard-wired resistor. The voltage across RSENSE deter-

W pensive miniature components, type, can be one, two, or three wires. IC1, mines current through the pass transis-
the hard-wired, voltage-controlled for example, has a three-wire SPI inter- tor, ISET: ISET(VCC - VIN)/RSENSE.
current source of yesterday becomes a face, and provides an end-to-end resist- The circuit can provide any current lev-
software-programmable voltage-con- ance of 50 k with 256 incremental set- el for which the external components,
trolled current source (Figure 1). A digi- tings. Thus, each increment of the digital RSENSE and the pass transistor, can handle
tal potentiometer, IC1 in conjunction potentiometer changes VIN by: the associated power dissipation (PIV).
with a precision op amp, IC2, sets current Because the ratio setting of digital poten-
through a pass transistor, ISET, and a shunt tiometers is good, with a typical ratio-
regulator, IC3, provides a constant refer- metric resistor temperature coefficient of
ence voltage across the digital poten- 5 ppm/C), precision and stability for the
tiometer. By operating in its linear region, Op amp IC2 regulates current through current source depend primarily on the
the transistor controls load current in re- the pass transistor, and the digital poten- precision and stability of IC3 and RSENSE
sponse to the applied gate voltage. Each tiometer sets current through the RSENSE combined.왏
incremental step of the digital poten-
VCC
tiometer increases or decreases the wiper
RSENSE
voltage, VIN, at the op amp’s
Figure 1 SHUNT
ISET
noninverting input. Thus, VIN MAX6138
varies with respect to the reference volt- IC3
GND
age, which in turn remains stable with re- _
IC2
spect to the supply rail: MAX5400
V MAX4165 P
IC1 IN+
This software- DIGITAL
+

programmable POTENTIOMETER

current source LOAD

applies current to
RS ISHUNT
Many types of digital potentiometer the load in 256
are currently available, and the interface equal increments.

72 edn | December 17, 2004 www.edn.com