LT6107
8
6107fb
APPLICATIONS INFORMATION
by orders of magnitude. A sense resistor with integrated
Kelvin sense terminals will give the best results. Figure 2
illustrates the recommended method.
This approach can be helpful in cases where occasional
bursts of high currents can be ignored.
Care should be taken when designing the board layout for
RIN, especially for small RIN values. All trace and inter-
connect resistances will increase the effective RIN value,
causing a gain error.
Selection of External Output Resistor, ROUT
The output resistor, ROUT, determines how the output cur-
rent is converted to voltage. VOUT is simply IOUT ROUT.
In choosing an output resistor, the maximum output volt-
age must rst be considered. If the following circuit is a
buffer or ADC with limited input range, then ROUT must be
chosen so that IOUT(MAX) ROUT is less than the allowed
maximum input range of this circuit.
In addition, the output impedance is determined by ROUT. If
the circuit to be driven has high enough input impedance,
then almost any useful output impedance will be accept-
able. However, if the driven circuit has relatively low input
impedance, or draws spikes of current such as an ADC
might do, then a lower ROUT value may be required in order
to preserve the accuracy of the output. As an example, if
the input impedance of the driven circuit is 100 times ROUT,
then the accuracy of VOUT will be reduced by 1% since:
VI
RR
OUT
IN DRIVEN
OUT
IN DRIVEN
=
+
=
()
IIR
IR
OUT
.
100
101
099
=
Error Sources
The current sense system uses an amplier and resistors
to apply gain and level shift the result. The output is then
dependent on the characteristics of the amplier, such as
gain and input offset, as well as resistor matching.
Ideally, the circuit output is:
VV
R
VR
I
OUT
SENSE
OUT
IN
SENSE
==
;
In this case, the only error is due to resistor mismatch,
which provides an error in gain only. However, offset volt-
age and bias current cause additional errors.
Figure 3. Shunt Diode Limits Maximum Input Voltage to Allow
Better Low Input Resolution Without Overranging
Figure 2. Kelvin Input Connection Preserves Accuracy with
Large Load Currents
Selection of External Input Resistor, RIN
RIN should be chosen to allow the required resolution
while limiting the output current to 1mA. In addition, the
maximum value for RIN is 500Ω. By setting RIN such that
the largest expected sense voltage gives IOUT = 1mA, then
the maximum output dynamic range is available. Output
dynamic range is limited by both the maximum allowed
output current and the maximum allowed output voltage,
as well as the minimum practical output signal. If less
dynamic range is required, then RIN can be increased
accordingly, reducing the maximum output current and
power dissipation. If low sense currents must be resolved
accurately in a system that has a very wide dynamic range,
a smaller RIN than the maximum current spec allows may
be used if the maximum current is limited in another way,
such as with a Schottky diode across RSENSE (Figure 3).
This will reduce the high current measurement accuracy
by limiting the result, while increasing the low current
measurement resolution.
LT6107
ROUT
VOUT
6107 F02
RIN
V+
LOAD
RSENSE
–
+
V+
V–
OUT
–IN
+IN
V+
LOAD
DSENSE
6107 F03
RSENSE