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Instrumentation Amplifier

An instrumentation amplifier is a type of differential amplifier that is particularly suitable for use in measurement equipment. It has very low offset and drift, high gain, and excellent common-mode rejection. Internally, it uses three op-amps arranged so that each input is buffered and there is one to produce the desired output. The gain is set by a single external resistor, allowing easy adjustment. Instrumentation amplifiers are used where great accuracy and stability are required both short and long term.

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418 views2 pages

Instrumentation Amplifier

An instrumentation amplifier is a type of differential amplifier that is particularly suitable for use in measurement equipment. It has very low offset and drift, high gain, and excellent common-mode rejection. Internally, it uses three op-amps arranged so that each input is buffered and there is one to produce the desired output. The gain is set by a single external resistor, allowing easy adjustment. Instrumentation amplifiers are used where great accuracy and stability are required both short and long term.

Uploaded by

Marcus Mills
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Instrumentation amplifier

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This page is about the electronic device.
Amplifiers for musical instruments are instrument amplifiers.

Typical instrumentation amplifier schematic


An instrumentation (or instrumentational) amplifier is a type of differential amplifier that has
been outfitted with input buffers, which eliminate the need for input impedance matching and
thus make the amplifier particularly suitable for use in measurement and test equipment.
Additional characteristics include very low DC offset, low drift, low noise, very high open-loop
gain, very high common-mode rejection ratio, and very high input impedances. Instrumentation
amplifiers are used where great accuracy and stability of the circuit both short- and long-term are
required.
Although the instrumentation amplifier is usually shown schematically identical to a standard op-
amp, the electronic instrumentation amp is almost always internally composed of 3 op-amps.
These are arranged so that there is one op-amp to buffer each input (+,−), and one to produce the
desired output with adequate impedance matching for the function.[1][2]
The most commonly used instrumentation amplifier circuit is shown in the figure. The gain of
the circuit is

The rightmost amplifier, along with the resistors labelled R2 and R3 is just the standard
differential amplifier circuit, with gain = R3 / R2 and differential input resistance = 2·R2. The two
amplifiers on the left are the buffers. With Rgain removed (open circuited), they are simple unity
gain buffers; the circuit will work in that state, with gain simply equal to R3 / R2 and high input
impedance because of the buffers. The buffer gain could be increased by putting resistors
between the buffer inverting inputs and ground to shunt away some of the negative feedback;
however, the single resistor Rgain between the two inverting inputs is a much more elegant
method: it increases the differential-mode gain of the buffer pair while leaving the common-
mode gain equal to 1. This increases the common-mode rejection ratio (CMRR) of the circuit
and also enables the buffers to handle much larger common-mode signals without clipping than
would be the case if they were separate and had the same gain. Another benefit of the method is
that it boosts the gain using a single resistor rather than a pair, thus avoiding a resistor-matching
problem (although the two R1s need to be matched), and very conveniently allowing the gain of
the circuit to be changed by changing the value of a single resistor. A set of switch-selectable
resistors or even a potentiometer can be used for Rgain, providing easy changes to the gain of the
circuit, without the complexity of having to switch matched pairs of resistors.

The ideal common-mode gain of an instrumentation amplifier is zero. In the circuit shown,
common-mode gain is caused by mismatches in the values of the equally-numbered resistors and
by the mis-match in common mode gains of the two input op-amps. Obtaining very closely
matched resistors is a significant difficulty in fabricating these circuits, as is optimizing the
common mode performance of the input op-amps.[3]
An instrumentation amp can also be built with 2 op-amps to save on cost and increase CMRR,
but the gain must be higher than 2 (+6 dB).[4][5]
Instrumentation amplifiers can be built with individual op-amps and precision resistors, but are
also available in integrated circuit form from several manufacturers (including Texas
Instruments, National Semiconductor, Analog Devices, Linear Technology and Maxim
Integrated Products). An IC instrumentation amplifier typically contains closely matched laser-
trimmed resistors, and therefore offers excellent common-mode rejection. Examples include
AD620, MAX4194 and INA128.
Instrumentation Amplifiers can also be designed using "Indirect Current-feedback Architecture",
which extend the operating range of these amplifiers to the negative power supply rail, and in
some cases the positive power supply rail. This can be particularly useful in single-supply
systems, where the negative power rail is simply the circuit ground (GND). Examples of parts
utilizing this architecture are MAX4208/MAX4209 and AD8129/AD8130.
Feedback-free instrumentation amplifier is the high input impedance diferential amplifier
designed without the external feedback network. This allows reduction in the number of
amplifiers (one instead of three), reduced noise (no thermal noise is brought on by the feedback
resistors) and increased bandwidth (no frequency compensation is needed). The design of such
amplifiers is treated here.

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