Rick Lyons (@Rick Lyons)

Richard Lyons is a Contracting Systems Engineer and Lecturer at Besser Associates, Mountain View, Calif. He has written over 30 articles and conference papers on DSP topics, and authored Amazon.com's top selling DSP book "Understanding Digital Signal Processing, 3rd Ed.". He served as an Associate Editor at IEEE Signal Processing Magazine, for nine years, where he created and edited the "DSP Tips & Tricks" column. Lyons is the editor of, and contributor to, the book "Streamlining Digital Signal Processing-A Tricks of the Trade Guidebook, 2nd Ed." (Wiley & Sons, 2012).

Somewhat Off Topic: Deciphering Transistor Terminology

Rick Lyons ● May 28, 2019●4 comments

I recently learned something mildly interesting about transistors, so I thought I'd share my new knowledge with you folks. Figure 1 shows a p-n-p transistor comprising a small block of n-type semiconductor sandwiched between two blocks of p-type semiconductor.

The terminology of "emitter" and "collector" seems appropriate, but did you ever wonder why the semiconductor block in the center is called the "base"? The word base seems inappropriate because the definition of the word base is:...

Specifying the Maximum Amplifier Noise When Driving an ADC

Rick Lyons ● June 9, 2014●8 comments

I recently learned an interesting rule of thumb regarding the use of an amplifier to drive the input of an analog to digital converter (ADC). The rule of thumb describes how to specify the maximum allowable noise power of the amplifier [1].

The Problem Here's the situation for an ADC whose maximum analog input voltage range is –VRef to +VRef. If we drive an ADC's analog input with an sine wave whose peak amplitude is VP = VRef, the ADC's output signal to noise ratio is maximized. We'll...