Electrical – Ultra low noise +/-15V power supply

power supply

I'm designing a preaplifier for a geophone. The amplifier uses OPAMPs which require +/-15V power supply for optimal operation. How can I generate such voltage rails without inserting excesive noise into circuit? Power supply should be as quiet as possible, with 9V unregulated input. The signals from the microphone are very weak.

Best Answer

Use a linear power supply with a screened power transformer, good filtering, followed by linear low-noise regulators (eg. TI) followed by a bit of RC+ ferrite bead filtering. Or batteries + linear regulators etc.

If you really need to work from a 9VDC battery you would be better off redesigning the circuit to work from something like +/-2.5V than trying to insert a switching regulator and then cover up the noise. It's not impossible to do it as you suggest, it just requires a lot of care, to the point where most experienced consultants (ie. folks who have an idea of what's involved) are going to no-bid or greatly increase the cost to cover all the work. Geophones are some of the most demanding signal sources around, and if you want to get low nV/sqrt(Hz) noise spectral density down to fractions of a Hz a lot of care is required.

Your signal bandwidth will probably be < 10Hz but you do need to worry about higher frequencies, including RF, causing subtle low frequency noise through nonlinear behavior.