Design of Clamping Circuit

 Design a clamping circuit to clamp the positive peak of an input signal

(say, a sinusoidal signal) to zero level as shown in fig. below:

 When the diode is OFF, ideally its reverse resistance is either

infinity or, in practice, very large (of the order of tens of mega
ohms).
 Design of Clamping Circuit

 If the input abruptly falls in amplitude, as

shown in Fig., the time constant associated
with the discharge of C(= RrC) is large.
 Then the positive peak of the signal in the
output may not be clamped to zero, even
after many cycles, in the absence of R.
 In numerous applications, the requirement
is that the signal should once again be
clamped to zero level in at least a few cycles.
 Hence, R is shunted across the diode D to
reduce the time constant.
 On this account, R is so chosen that it is
significantly smaller than Rr. Hence,

where a is a large number.

 Design of Clamping Circuit

During the period the diode is OFF, some

charge is lost by the condenser C.
This lost charge is replenished when the
diode is ON; during this period the
resistance offered by the diode is Rf , which
is very small (of the order of few tens of
ohms).
To ensure that the charge is acquired by
the capacitor in a relatively small amount of
time, R should be significantly larger than
Rf . Hence

R=aRf
Design of Clamping Circuit
 Clamping Circuit Theorem

 This theorem enables us to calculate the voltage level to which the

output is clamped by considering the areas above and below the

reference level, when the values of Rf and R are known.

 The clamping circuit theorem states that under steady-state conditions,

for any input waveform, the ratio of the area under the output voltage

curve in the forward direction to that in the reverse direction is equal to

the ratio Rf /R.

 Clamping Circuit Theorem

 To prove the clamping circuit theorem, consider a typical steady-state

output for the clamping circuit, represented below:

Clamping Circuit Theorem
Clamping Circuit Theorem
Clamping Circuit Theorem