
M
S ingle/Dual, 500MHz, Low-Power,
Current-Mode Feedbac k Amplifiers
10
______________________________________________________________________________________
bypassing and board layout. The PC board should
have at least two layers: a signal and power layer on
one side, and a large, low-impedance ground plane on
the other side. The ground plane should be as free of
voids as possible. With multilayer boards, locate the
ground plane on a layer that incorporates no signal or
power traces.
Regardless of whether a constant-impedance board is
used, observe the following guidelines when designing
the board. Wire-wrap boards are much too inductive,
and breadboards are much too capacitive; neither
should be used. IC sockets increase parasitic capaci-
tance and inductance, and should not be used. In gen-
eral, surface-mount components give better high-
frequency performance than through-hole components.
They have shorter leads and lower parasitic reac-
tances. Keep lines as short and as straight as possible.
Do not make 90° turns; round all corners.
Observe high-frequency bypassing techniques to
maintain the amplifier’s accuracy. The bypass capaci-
tors should include a 1000pF ceramic capacitor
between each supply pin and the ground plane, locat-
ed as close to the package as possible. Next, place a
0.01μF to 0.1μF ceramic capacitor in parallel with each
1000pF capacitor, and as close to them as possible.
Then place a 10μF to 15μF low-ESR tantalum at the
point of entry (to the PC board) of the power-supply
pins. The power-supply trace should lead directly from
the tantalum capacitor to the V
CC
and V
EE
pins. To
minimize parasitic inductance, keep PC traces short
and use surface-mount components.
Choosing Feedbac k and Gain Resistors
The MAX4112/MAX4113/MAX4117/MAX4118 are cur-
rent-mode feedback amplifiers optimized for a 499
feedback resistor. Although a standard 5% value is suf-
ficient, a 1% value is preferred to maintain consistency
over a wide range of production lots. Changing feed-
back resistor value will reduce the bandwidth or cause
excessive peaking. Use the input resistor (R
F
) to
change the magnitude of the gain. Figure 2 shows the
standard inverting and noninverting configurations.
Notice that the gain of the noninverting circuit (Figure
2b) is 1 plus the magnitude of the inverting closed-loop
gain. Otherwise the two circuits are identical and equiv-
alent (see Table 1).
V
OUT
R
G
V
OUT
= -(R
F
/R
G
) x V
IN
V
IN
R
F
R
O
R
S
R
T
MAX4112
MAX4113
MAX4117
MAX4118
Figure 2a. Inverting Gain Configuration
V
OUT
V
IN
R
G
V
OUT
= [1+ (R
F
/R
G
)] V
IN
R
F
R
O
R
T
MAX4112
MAX4113
MAX4117
MAX4118
Figure 2b. Noninverting Gain Configuration
30
49.9
500
—
49.9
499
499
8
40
0.1dB Flatness (MHz)
49.9
50
—
49.9
20
62.5
180
R
T
(
)
Small-Signal Bandwidth (MHz)
499
MAX4112/MAX4117
GAIN (V/V)
15
49.9
100
—
49.9
56
0
R
S
(
)
499
49.9
R
O
(
)
COMPONENT
247
R
G
(
)
90
499
R
F
(
)
49.9
275
0
49.9
69
499
8
90
49.9
50
—
49.9
10
250
325
499
79
49.9
235
—
49.9
56
—
499
49.9
62.5
499
4
49.9
23
—
49.9
5
499
MAX4113/MAX4118
GAIN (V/V)
+2
+25
+10
-2
+8
+50
+10
-8
+100
Table 1. Recommended Component Values