Matching Devices — Nelson Pass / 1993

After you acquire the devices, you will need to test them. You might consider running lots of tests on these transistors, but only one is essential: measuring gate-source voltage versus current. The greatest variations occur here, and it is necessary to do some matching to get proper performance. This test will also tell you whether or not the device is broken. The test is simple and requires a power supply, a resistor, and a DC voltmeter. Figure 12 shows the test hookup for N- and P-channel types. The supply source resistance (R1) is nominal, and is found from I =… More...

Super-Symmetric Amplification — Nelson Pass / 1998

U.S. Patent # 5376899 describes a new amplifying circuit topology that takes advantage of the character of special matched balanced amplifiers that are cross-coupled to provide cancellation of distortion and noise. The result provides high performance with very simple linear circuits, better than previous efforts by an order of magnitude. We have dubbed the approach Super-Symmetry (Su-Sy), an homage to particle physics. Super-Symmetry works by exploiting the complementary characteristics of precision matched balanced circuits to differentially reject distortion and noise, and extends this symmetry to make the distortion and noise virtually identical on each half of a balanced amplifying circuit.… More...