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Fontana bridge
Encyclopedia
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Bridge circuit
A bridge circuit is a type of electrical circuit in which two circuit branches are "bridged" by a third branch connected between the first two branches at some intermediate point along them. The bridge was originally developed for laboratory measurement purposes and one of the intermediate...
that implements a wide frequency band voltage-to-current converter. The converter is characterized by a combination of positive and negative feedback loops, implicit in this bridge configuration. This feature allows compensation for parasitic impedance
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If balance condition:
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is met, then:
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The circuit includes two differential amplifiers. The top differential amplifier, whose output is referred to ground potential, has unitary gain. The bottom differential amplifier, whose output is referred to ground potential, has ideally infinite gain. Ordinary operational amplifiers can be adopted with limitations in accuracy and bandwidth.
The Fontana bridge is also called Compensated Current Injection Circuit.
It was originally discovered by Giorgio Fontana, University of Trento, Italy, in 2003 using a symbolic equation solver for kirchhoff's circuit laws
Kirchhoff's circuit laws
Kirchhoff's circuit laws are two equalities that deal with the conservation of charge and energy in electrical circuits, and were first described in 1845 by Gustav Kirchhoff...
. The bridge details are available in .