Welcome back to this week’s installment of Scope Noob where I’m sharing my experiences learning to use my first oscilloscope. Last week I started out measuring mains frequency using an AC-AC wall wart ...

Everyone loves a full-wave bridge rectifier, but there’s no denying that they aren’t 100% efficient due to the diode voltage drop. Which isn’t to say that with some effort we cannot create an ideal ...

The losses in a bridge rectifier can easily become significant when low voltages are being rectified. The voltage drop across the bridge is a good 1.5 V, which is a hefty 25% with an input voltage of ...

Electronic engineers know the common mantras when it comes to creating new designs: Make it cheaper. Make it smaller. Make it faster. These goals, along with technological evolution, keep most ...

Fig. 1. Typical diode full-wave bridge. Full-wave diode bridges are found in many electronic systems (Fig. 1). At typical AC power line voltages, the drop across the diodes has little impact on the ...