Let me start out saying I'm not trying to build anything specific or useful here, just trying to learn the behavior of circuits.
Is it possible to turn a 0 to 5V square wave pulse into a -500mV to +500mV pulse using just passive components and where the only voltage source available is 5V?
What I'm aiming for is using some resistors and capacitors (and inductors, if necessary) where there's a capacitor divider network where half the square wave ends up below ground potential (presumably due to a discharging capacitor or two).
It's easy enough for me to use two capacitors to create a divider network to get a 0 to 500mv or 0 to 1V square wave, but what I've failed at is being able to bring the square wave below ground potential in LTSpice.
I know it's possible to simply change the voltage source parameters in LTSpice to pulse from -500mV to +500mV. That is NOT what I'm looking for. I want to know how to do it by adding components to a 0V to 5V pulsing voltage source.
Best Answer
You can use a 5:1 resistive divider followed by a DC blocking capacitor. You are going to have to use a large enough capacitor to get the RC time constant well below the fundamental frequency of the square wave.
simulate this circuit – Schematic created using CircuitLab
This can be simulated to see the various waveforms and experiment with the values and frequencies.