Electronic – How to design two circuits with Instrumentation Amplifier to produce the same output

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I want to measure the current in a 5V circuit. The current is between 50uA and 2.5mA. The current is from a NTC and it changes slowly (10Hz measurement is fast enough).

Here is the typical application circuit from the MCP6N11 datasheet. My circuit is very similar.

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I intend to use the Instrumentation Amplifier MCP6N11 (because it does the job and I can buy it locally) with the output connected to a 12 bit ADC MCP3204.

I plan two identical circuits (to measure similar sensors). For the same current the circuits should produce the same digital value in the ADC.

I am thinking how I can make sure to see identical values. Because even if I use 0.5% resistors they are likely different in each circuit. I could have i.e. a nominal 100 Ohm resistor which is one time 99.5 Ohm and the other one 100.5 Ohm.

I see the following options:

  1. Add a trim pot parallel to Rsense or Rf or Rg and adjust it so that the circuits match.
  2. Like 1 but with a fixed parallel resistor, i.e. 100 Ohm with a parallel 47k Ohm resistor
  3. Don't change the resistors. Adjust the digital output of the ADCs in the microprocessor (i.e. a * 1.013 = b)

What is the best approach to do this? Initially this has to work with a temperature of about 20 to 50 degrees Celsius. But in the future maybe it should work for automotive temperature range.

I don't really know how accurate I have to build this and how accurate I can build this with of the shelf parts. I try to make the accuracy better than 1% – if possible without a huge amount of work.

Best Answer

Specify a realistic accuracy, then work to that.

Hint, to find out what's realistic, do an error analysis including drift over time and temperature, as well as initial tolerance of the components. Initial tolerance can be calibrated out, drift between calibration and measurement cannot be.