Energy Fundamentals of Radio

Chapter 3The Least You Need to Know About Analog Electronics

Electronic circuit design is a huge and fascinating topic. If you come from a circuits background, the notion of devoting a mere chapter may well offend you.

If this is you, then two things. First, and most importantly, there is absolutely no intention to assert that electronic circuit design can be covered comprehensively in a single book, much less a single chapter. As with so many topics in this slender volume, the central thesis is that there are a few principles that are incredibly valuable to both the general practitioner and the specialist alike, and we attempt to treat those here. If you are a systems architect, knowledge of these principles will help you to collaborate meaningfully with the design specialists who realize individual circuit blocks. If you are a design specialist, deep awareness of these principles will arm you to sort out what details are useful to share with the architect and what details are...not.

Second, consider the following seemingly outrageous statement: Most of the time in electronic circuits, the Task is to set a voltage on a capacitor as quickly and as accurately as possible. See Figure 3.1. Our information is often encoded as a voltage, and the node whose voltage needs to be set has some capacitance to an incremental ground. That capacitance may be deliberately placed, or may simply be a parasitic element that cannot be avoided. Either way, if you give it some thought, you will ...