Designing Analog Electronics

Part 1: Error and Uncertainty

- By Andrew Levido

Designing analog electronics hardware is less orderly and predictable than digital electronics design. In this article series, Andrew describes the tools and techniques for producing high quality, reliable analog circuits. In Part 1, he looks at the key factor that differentiate analog and digital electronics— managing errors and uncertainty.

In the last 10 years or so, we have seen a real resurgence of interest in designing and building electronics hardware, driven by the accessibility of platforms such as Arduino and Raspberry Pi. Many of those people have come to hardware design from a software or firmware background, and have acquired the necessary skills by getting their hands dirty and building stuff.

One of the most challenging parts of hardware design (at least in my opinion) is analog design. This is an area of electronics which, while relatively straightforward to get started with, is really quite difficult to master. Unlike the order and predictability of digital electronics, analog electronics can be messy, noisy and uncertain. I firmly believe that there is no magic to good analog design. Armed with a little knowledge and a handful of tools and techniques, anyone can produce high-quality, reliable and reproducible analog circuits.

I hope to demonstrate some of these tools and techniques in this series of articles. They are aimed at readers who are comfortable with the basics of electronics, but want to strengthen their knowledge of analog circuit design. It is not meant to be a rigorous exposition of analog design theory, but rather to offer some tools, tips, and techniques that might help you avoid some of the traps and produce effective and functional analog circuits. I am going to keep things very practical, using a minimum of mathematics and lots of real-world examples.

A DESIGN EXAMPLE