The Designer's Guide Community Forum
https://designers-guide.org/forum/YaBB.pl
Design >> Analog Design >> What's the difference between trimming and calibration?
https://designers-guide.org/forum/YaBB.pl?num=1262076614

Message started by chmf on Dec 29th, 2009, 12:50am

Title: What's the difference between trimming and calibration?
Post by chmf on Dec 29th, 2009, 12:50am

What's the difference between trimming and calibration?
Thanks.

Title: Re: What's the difference between trimming and calibration?
Post by solidstate on Dec 29th, 2009, 2:12am

Hi chmf,

The way I see it, trimming is adjusting something inside a device or circuit so that the difference between the device output and a reference becomes (ideally) zero. Think of adjusting a resistor in a bandgap to get a certain output voltage. Trimming = changing something in the circuit.

Calibration, on the other hand, is to measure the difference between a device output and a reference, store it, and then compensate for it, e.g. storing the offset of an ADC in a microcontroller and subtracting it there... this leaves the circuit untouched.

Title: Re: What's the difference between trimming and calibration?
Post by Mayank on Dec 29th, 2009, 3:32am

In one Line,
                Trimming is done through Calibration.

If you talk circuitwise [ & not much different from solid-state's explanation ],  
  Calibration ckt refers to the cktry used to measure the variation in actual o/p from desired/reference o/p of the DUT.

  Trimming refers to placing programmable/tunable components in your ckt which can be calibrated through a calibration ckt.

--
Mayank.

Title: Re: What's the difference between trimming and calibration?
Post by sheldon on Dec 29th, 2009, 7:51am

CHMF,

   Not sure that there are any standard definitions. I would lean
more towards trimming as being a "hard" change to the system,
for example, laser trimming or blowing fuses. The traditional
analog types of circuit tuning. While calibration is a "soft" change
to the system, for example, digitally selecting a combination of
varactors that give the correct oscillation frequency for a VCO.
So the digital techniques used for digitally-assisted analog design
would count as calibration.

                                                         Best Regards,

                                                             Sheldon

Title: Re: What's the difference between trimming and calibration?
Post by thechopper on Dec 29th, 2009, 4:22pm

I'm mostly with Mayank in this one...

In my opinion, calibration involves a dedicated circuit for measuring the variation of the circuit's parameter to be tuned; such circuit included in the system + the compensation means
Trimming is just the compensation means.

Best
Tosei

The Designer's Guide Community Forum » Powered by YaBB 2.2.2!
YaBB © 2000-2008. All Rights Reserved.