Chapter 18 – Designs for high performance voltage-to-frequency converters

L, LT, LTC, LTM, Linear Technology and the Linear logo are registered trademarks of Linear Technology Corporation. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. Monolithic, modular and hybrid technologies have been used to implement voltage-to-frequency converters. A number of types are commercially available and overall performance is adequate to meet many requirements. In many cases, however, very high performance or special characteristics are required and available units will not work. In these instances V→F circuits specifi cally optimized for the desired parameters(s) are required. This application note presents examples of circuits which offer substantially improved performance over commercially available V→Fs. Various approaches (see Box Section, “V→F Design Techniques”) permit improvements in speed, dynamic range, stability and linearity. Other circuits feature low voltage operation, sine wave output and deliberate nonlinear transfer functions.