The Importance of Ripple Measurement in Low-Voltage Analog Circuit Design

As power supply design for microprocessors requires increasingly lower voltages, interest and emphasis on ripple measurement is growing.

This webinar will address the necessity of ripple measurement across industries and explore how to efficiently measure ripple through Tektronix's proprietary solutions.

Generally speaking, ripple refers to the AC component remaining in the DC output when AC is rectified in a rectifier circuit—in other words, voltage noise.

For example, 3.3V not only has its nominal value of 3.3V but also exhibits fluctuation both above and below that level, and this variation is called ripple. Depending on the magnitude of ripple, it affects the performance of operating CPUs, converters such as ADCs and DACs, which is why ripple measurement is necessary.

If the ripple level that needs to be managed is specified as ±5%, the meaning of ±5% at 3V or 5V differs significantly from ±5% at 1V. Ripple management is becoming considerably more challenging.

 
In other words, as more devices using low voltages have emerged recently, more precise ripple design is required compared to the past.

The most typical example is battery-powered applications. These applications have recently adopted low voltage operation extensively. Particularly with IoT applications, standby power consumption must inherently be low, so the voltages used by internal components are also lower. Devices that employ low-voltage design more frequently than other applications are often highly sensitive to voltage variations.

 


Being able to accurately measure ripple during power supply design means being able to precisely distinguish and measure aspects that could not be addressed due to system noise inherent in oscilloscopes and probes.

Through Tektronix's proprietary power rail probe solution, Tektronix will help you gain insight into accurately and precisely measuring ripple in the mV range and ripple in the GHz band.

 

We welcome the participation of engineers interested in ripple issues occurring in low-voltage analog circuit design.