An Introduction to Wheatstone Bridge Circuits and Differential Amplifiers

If you need to measure resistance precisely, a Wheatstone bridge is a simple circuit

that provides a way to do so by taking a voltage measurement. Despite the simplicity
of a Wheatstone bridge, it can be a challenge to make use of one effectively.

Many sensor types use a Wheatstone bridge internally, as the resistance measured in
the circuit can be linked back to some other phenomenon that causes the resistance of
the sensor to change. You’ll find Wheatstone bridge circuits in all kinds of compression
and tension-based devices, such as air and fluid pressure sensors, strain gauges and
more. While in some devices, there is an integrated circuit providing amplification of
minute voltage changes, it’s also common to have direct access to the bridge, such as
in a strain gauge/load cell.

Wheatstone bridges are one of those circuits that you might not feel like you’ve come
across before, but you probably have inside some device or sensor you are using.
Virtually every digital scale uses a Wheatstone bridge-based load cell, for example.
The simplicity and effectiveness of a Wheatstone bridge makes it an incredibly powerful
circuit, even if it does have a relatively niche application.

What is a Wheatstone Bridge?

A Wheatstone bridge uses two balanced legs in a bridge circuit (i.e., two voltage
dividers) to provide a link between the voltage across the bridge circuit and some
unknown resistance of one resistor in the Wheatstone bridge. The simplest type of
Wheatstone bridge balances two legs of a bridge circuit, one leg of which includes the
unknown component. In other words, if you know the values of three of the resistors,
you can calculate the resistance of an unknown fourth resistor simply by measuring the
voltage across the bridge. This circuit provides a voltage change as the resistance
changes, allowing a microcontroller or other device to measure determine the
resistance of the unknown element by reading the voltage through an ADC.

1
Typical applications for a Wheatstone bridge circuits in modern devices primarily
include strain gauges, load cells, pressure sensors, relative humidity sensors,
thermistors, and resistance temperature detector (RTD) probes. The Wheatstone
bridge is capable of measuring minimal changes in resistance down to milliOhm levels
as long as the ADC being used has sufficient resolution (high bit depth). Note that there
are many bridge topologies other than a Wheatstone bridge. Other bridge circuits can
be used to measure capacitance, inductance, and impedance; however, we will not be
looking into those in this article.

Taking a Resistance Measurement with a Wheatstone Bridge Circuit

The working principle of the bridge is the use of four resistors typically represented by
a diamond shape. Here, we have three known resistances and a fourth resistor with an
unknown value. When we supply a voltage across to the top and bottom terminals of
the bridge as shown above, the bridge creates two parallel voltage dividers. It the
voltage is measured across the centre of the bridge, it can be converted into a
resistance using the formulas I'll show here. These formulas are simple enough that
you can implement them in a small MCU.

2
To begin, from looking at the above circuit, you should be able to see that the voltage
between V0 and V1 will be equal to 0 V when the four resistors satisfy the following
relation.

Here, R? is the unknown resistor, and the other three resistors have known value. Here,
we can solve the above formula for R? for this particular case where the voltage
between V0 and V1 is equal to 0 V.

This condition can be used to calibrate the Wheatstone bridge with a varistor or a
potentiometer, but it does not help us determine an unknown resistor in other cases.

To determine the value of the unknown resistor, let’s take the circuit shown above a
little further. The voltage across R2 as measured at V0 will be:

In the bridge above, know that this will be made up of 10K resistors so V0 will
be half the input voltage of 5V:

In other words, V0 should always be 2.5 V if we use high-quality resistors. This will be
the case no matter what happens to the unknown resistor. Now the voltage divider with
port V1 has our unknown resistor, so we have a similar equation for the voltage across
R? (as measured at port V1):

3
Because we are measuring the difference between the voltages at the two ports, we
can write V = V0 - V1 and substitute the above equations into this expression. This
gives us the following:

Note that you can see we will have V equal to 0 if the unknown resistor R? is equal to
R3*R2/R1, i.e., if the bridge is balanced.

With V0 and V1 connected to a differential ADC, we can measure the positive and
negative voltage differential using a microcontroller or other device. The differential
voltage is caused by the unknown resistor not being equal to the other resistor - the
bridge being unbalanced. As a note, in practical applications, you will likely need to
amplify the signal before connecting it to a differential amplifier.

With a bit of algebra, and with a measurement of this voltage differential V, we can
solve the above equation for R? and calculate the value of the unknown resistor:

Remember, V is the differential across V0/V1, and VS is the supply voltage given to the
Wheatstone bridge. In our example with R1 = R2 = R3 = 10 kOhms, we can calculate
the unknown resistance R? if we measured a 1 V difference across the bridge. In this
case, the unknown resistance would be:

4
You can confirm this by calculating the voltage output from both dividers individually,
one providing 2.5 V (the known one) and the other to provide 1.5 V. If you want an
online calculator as a sanity check, I like the one on Ohms Law Calculator. As someone
who has dyslexia, even basic formulas can trip me up, so I typically rely on online
calculators as a sanity check - don’t feel bad if you need an online calculator too!

Typically you’ll find a Wheatstone bridge application in the real world will give you much
less substantial changes in resistance. However, so you’ll want to use one with an
amplifier or an ADC with a programmable gain amplifier. For example, with a load cell,
it’s not uncommon for me to use 128 times amplification or more.

Using a Wheatstone Bridge Circuit with an Amplifier

While there might be applications where you can use a Wheatstone bridge directly, real
world applications for a Wheatstone bridge typically result in microvolts or millivolts of
differential at best. As an example in my article on the Octopart Blog, Reading Small
Signal Voltages, I reference a load cell which uses a pretty typical Wheatstone bridge
strain gauge. The 100kg load cell only provides a voltage change of 50μV per kilogram.
This isn’t much use for plugging directly into a microcontroller or other logic. So how do
you use it?

Differential Amplifier
The most basic way to make the voltage change more useful is using a general-purpose
rail-to-rail differential amplifier, no specialised ADC required!

5
By using a differential amplifier configuration, we can amplify the difference between
the two Wheatstone bridge voltage dividers which can then be fed to a microcontroller
ADC, or other device. The Wheatstone bridge circuit converts the resistance change
into a voltage change, and the amplifier makes the voltage change useful. This is quite
useful when working with sensors that exhibit very small changes in resistance as now
the voltage difference can be read easily.

Alternatively, you could use an instrumentation amplifier instead of a general-purpose

differential amplifier for greater precision.

High Impedance Amplifier

For additional precision, we can first buffer the output from the Wheatstone bridge. Due
to the high input impedance, the stability and precision of the circuit are improved. You
can implement this with buffer amplifiers (unity gain) or just use another operational
amplifier with no gain as a buffer. By utilising a quad amplifier package, you can buffer
and then amplify with a single IC package.

By using a differential amplifier configuration, we can amplify the difference between

the two Wheatstone bridge voltage dividers which can then be fed to a microcontroller
ADC, or other device. The Wheatstone bridge circuit converts the resistance change
into a voltage change, and the amplifier makes the voltage change useful. This is quite
useful when working with sensors that exhibit very small changes in resistance as now
the voltage difference can be read easily.

6
Alternatively, you could use an instrumentation amplifier instead of a general-purpose
differential amplifier for greater precision.

Instrumentation Amplifier
We could, at this point, take this circuit a step further by adding some additional
resistors to build an instrumentation amplifier. Instead, we’ll take the more precise,
compact and precise option and simple design using an instrumentation amplifier IC.
An instrumentation amplifier is going to allow us to very precisely amplify the signal
without having to worry overly much about using 0.1% or better resistors for the
operational amplifiers or tune every circuit we build for precision. The IC manufacturer
has already done that at the factory. While an instrumentation amplifier is more
expensive than a single general-purpose operational amplifier, it offers cost savings in
being an available IC solution without requiring high precision external components to
make it function correctly. The space savings, and BOM line savings (and therefore
inventory and feeders on a pick and place line) also should not be ignored.

An instrumentation amplifier is going to allow us to precisely amplify signals between

the two inputs while also having excellent common-mode rejection. This way, any
electrical noise picked up on our Wheatstone bridge’s cables or traces will be ignored
as it should be nearly identical to both of our nets. The gain setting resistor is separate
to our inputs, easy to calculate and simple to route. The gain resistor can also be set
using a digital pot, or some instrumentation amplifiers have built-in digital pots which
can be set over common protocols such as I2C or SPI.

As an added bonus, many instrumentation amplifiers have a reference pin which allows
you to supply a DC bias to the signal, further simplifying reading the output of a
Wheatstone bridge circuit from a single-supply device like a microcontroller.

You will find the gain function for the amplifier in the datasheet, for example, in the
Texas Instruments INA821 datasheet we find the function:

7
By using this equation, we can easily calculate the correct value for Rg to obtain the
gain we wish our amplifier to have. If we wanted to have 100 gain, we could simplify
and rearrange the equation to:

Therefore, a 499 ohm resistor for RG will give us almost exactly 100 gain.

If you struggle a bit with rearranging formulas/algebraic equations, as always there is

a great online calculator available - in this case, check out the one at SymbolAB. To
calculate 100 gain as I did above, you could enter in something like 100 = 1+(49400/x),
and it will solve x for you.

This would give us a circuit (without decoupling caps) which looks as we have above -
much more straightforward than the other circuit’s we’ve looked at right?

8
Configuring Gain
You might be wondering how much gain you need, and what you should set the
reference pin on the instrumentation amplifier to. Analog Devices has a handy online
tool called Diamond Plot. This tool allows you to choose the parameters, such as
gain/supply voltage and Vref so you can maximize the instrumentation amplifiers
working range and adjust your instrumentation amplifier to your ADC or other
application. By using a tool like this, you can ensure you create the largest dynamic
range possible to have the highest resolution signal you can. The tool will also generate
handy warnings if you have incorrect parameters. Different factors could lead to internal
signal saturation, and this could reduce the maximum dynamic range of your signal, or
lead to clipping and other issues.

For example:
• The input voltage signal is too high for the preset gain
• The reference voltage is too high for the generated output voltage signal
• The power supply voltage is too low
This tool could help to choose the correct parameters for your instrumentation amplifier
specific to your application.

9
Suppose we change the initially displayed example’s parameters. In that case, you
can see it will tell us we’ve done something wrong and give suggestions on what to
change to bring the signal within the device’s capabilities.

This tool is designed explicitly for Analog Devices components. However, there is a
broad range of Analog Devices parts available to be used with it. If you wanted to use
a device from a competitor, you can likely find an AD part with similar parameters and
use that in the tool.

Instrumentation Amplifier Examples

If you’re keen to use an instrumentation amplifier with your Wheatstone bridge,
consider some of these budget-friendly options from Analog Devices, Texas
Instruments and Maxim Integrated.

10
These instrumentation amps are great examples of budget-friendly options that can be
used in your projects. Each has its strengths and weaknesses, with a wide range of
capabilities represented in just these three components depending on your
applications.

11
In Conclusion
A Wheatstone bridge is a classic circuit, with the original design and concept dating
back almost two hundred years. There are not very many standard circuits that we use
in modern electronics which have stood the test of time as well as the Wheatstone
bridge. The simplicity of the circuit combined with its utility ensures we will continue to
be using them long into the future.

We’ve only covered the basics in this article. There are ways to improve the linearity of
Wheatstone bridge circuits. Depending on the type of sensor and how you are
consuming the output of the bridge, we can increase the precision and reliability of the
readings. We’ll cover those aspects more in-depth in sensor-specific articles in the
future. There is also a wide range of other bridge circuits which, whilst generally not as
popular as the Wheatstone bridge, still find uses for measuring capacitance and
inductance among other values.

If you’re looking for an easy way to quickly improve your existing Wheatstone bridge
circuit implementation, changing from a single supply to a dual supply is a very quick
and easy way to gain resolution, flatten the response curve and improve noise
immunity. If you’re currently using a 5V and GND circuit, for example, adding a charge
pump based inverting switched-mode power supply will cost you three cheap
components and give you a -5V supply. By having a +5V/-5V supply on your bridge
circuit, your output will be balanced at 0v/ground. This improves rejection and any dual
supply rail-to-rail general-purpose or instrumentation amplifier will be able to make use
of the output signal without any changes required. The only other change you will need
to consider is biasing the output of the amplifier to ensure the minimum and maximum
voltages are within the range of what your ADC or other circuitry can easily read.

12
 INSTRUMENTATION AMPLIFIER

The instrumentation amplifier (IA) is one of the most useful, precise, and versatile
amplifiers available today. You will find at least one in every data acquisition unit. The
basic IA is made from three op amps and seven resistors, as shown in the next figure.
To simplify circuit analysis, note that the instrumentation amplifier is actually made by
connecting a buffered amplifier to a basic differential amplifier.

Op amp A3 and its four resistors, R, form a differential amplifier with a gain of 1. Only
the A3 resistors have to be matched. The resistor R’ can be variable to balance out any
common-mode voltage. Only one resistor, aR, is used to set the gain according to next
equation.

𝑉𝑜 2
=1+
𝐸1 − 𝐸2 𝑎

𝑎𝑅
Where 𝑎 =
𝑅

E1 is applied to the (+) input and E2 to the (-) input. Vo is proportional to the difference
between input voltages. Characteristics of the instrumentation amplifier are
summarized as follows:

13
 Basic instrumentation amplifier model

Differential, Instrumentation, and Bridge Amplifiers

14
In the previous figure R= 25 kΩ and aR = 50 Ω. Calculate the voltage gain.

Solution.

Example.
If aR is removed so that aR = ∞, what is the voltage gain?
Solution.

Example.
In the circuit shown, the following voltages are applied to the inputs. Each voltage
polarity is given with respect to ground. Assuming the gain of 1001from the first
example, find Vo for (a) E1 = 5.001 V and E2 = 5.002 V, (b) E1 = 5.001 V and E2 =
5.000 V, (c) E1 = -1.001 V, E2 = -1.002 V.

Solution.

15
 What is a 4-20 mA current loop?

The 4-20 mA current loop has been the standard for signal transmission and
electronic control in control systems since the 1950's.

In a current loop, the current signal is drawn from a dc power supply, flows through the
transmitter, into the controller and then back to the power supply in a series circuit. The
advantage is that the current value does not degrade over long distances, so the current
signal remains constant through all components in the loop. As a result, the accuracy
of the signal is not affected by a voltage drop in the interconnecting wiring.

Voltage drop
Voltage signals sent over a long distance will, however, degrade in accuracy and
develop a voltage drop (using Ohm's Law) proportional to the length of the cable.
Accuracy loss of the voltage signal would equal the mA signal value multiplied by the
resistance of the wire.

16
The use of 4 mA as a "Live Zero" enhances the signal-to-noise-ratio at low levels.
This Live Zero also makes a loop failure more apparent. A nonfunctioning current
loop with an open termination or connection has zero current flow, which is outside
the valid 4 to 20 mA signal range.

Verifying the 4 to 20 mA loop

Milliamp loop calibrators are typically used to test loops that measure pH, pressure,
temperature, level and flow. Verifying the 4 to 20 mA loop is a crucial step in any
instrument calibration. Full loop verification includes testing the output of the
transmitter, the wiring, input to the control system as well as the control system input
card and the return wiring back to the transmitter.

Fluke 715 Volt/mA Loop Calibrator

Key features
• Compact mA calibrator for measuring 0-20 mA
or 4-20 mA signals
• High accuracy—0.01% and 1 µA resolution
• Measures voltage output process signals from
PLCs and transmitters
• Sources or simulates 4-20 mA loop current
• Sources voltage to 100 mV or 10 V

17