Ken Yang

Ken Yang, application engineer, received an MSEE from the University of California-San Diego, La Jolla, Calif.

My Latest Content

My Latest Comments

Author Articles

Ensure A Fixed Bias Current For Gain Blocks

By Ken Yang, November 06, 2006

RF gain blocks (amplifiers) are popular because they offer wide bandwidth, low noise, and ease of use. They're designed to operate with a fixed value of supply current because variations in supply current cause variations in the gain, compression point,
Single Transistor Cuts LDO Noise By 46 dB

By Ken Yang, April 14, 2005

Some of the many low-dropout (LDO) regulators supplying voltage regulation for electronic systems are designed for low noise. For example, the IC in Figure 1 achieves an RMS noise voltage of about 115 µV by itself. However, some ultra-low-noi
Emergency Light Turns White LEDs On When Power Goes Out

By Ken Yang, October 04, 2004

Power outages often occur unexpectedly, leaving you in total darkness. Whether in a hospital, a theater, or your home, such occasions call for an emergency lighting system that turns on automatically. The preferred emergency light source is...
Digital Potentiometers Convert Voltage To Resistance

By Ken Yang, June 07, 2004

Industrial controls and variable-bias circuits sometimes require the services of voltage-to-resistance converters. But they can be difficult to implement. The simple approach shown in the figure builds such a...
Pulse-Width Modulator Features Versatile Operating Parameters

By Ken Yang, March 01, 2004

Included among the many applications for pulse-width modulation (PWM) are voltage regulation, power-level control, and fan-speed control. A PWM circuit for such systems can be implemented with three op amps on a single quad-op-amp chip (...
Modified LDO Regulator Sinks PECL-Termination Current

By Ken Yang, January 19, 2004

The positive emitter-coupled logic (PECL) used in high-speed telecommunications requires odd supply voltages: a positive VCC of +3.3 V, and a termination voltage (VTT) equal to VCC − 2 V = +1.3 V. The...
Position Sensor Exploits Faraday's Law

By Ken Yang, May 12, 2003

Consider two resistors, R1 (1 kΩ) and R2 (3 kΩ), connected in parallel (Fig. 1a). According to Faraday's Law, a time-varying magnetic field H, increasing linearly with time, induces a...