Fully diff signal to single ended signal

analogdifferentialsingle-ended

I'm designign a circuit using the AMC1200 isolation amplifier from TI.

http://www.ti.com/product/amc1200-q1

As you can see the output is differential, and I'd like too feed it to a schmidt trigger to catch the 2.5V transitions. The problem is that the trigger is single ended, so here is my question:
is there an easy way to transform the fully differential output in a single ended output i.e. having the difference between the outputs? I know I can use just one of the outputs but I basically loose half of the dynamic range, and that might be a problem.

Best Answer

Here's what the output from the AMC1200 looks like: -

enter image description here

As you can see either output will swing from about 1.3V to about 3.9V and if you used a normal differential to single end converter, the minimum voltage out would be 2.6V to 7.8V.

I suspect you have a 5V supply and don't want to over-complicate things with adding a 10V positive supply (and possibly a small negative supply) so that you could use an instrumentation amp like the AD8221: -

enter image description here

But, if you do think this complication is necessary then that's fine. You don't need a gain set resistor but you do need to set an offset on pin 6 to set the "mid-point" or neutral position of your output. The AD8221 is good for over 100kHz so no problem there.

On the other hand just use one of the single-ended outputs from the isolation amp and I'm sure it will be just fine. You're only feeding a comparator so any noise can be easily filtered and using a Schmitt trigger should avoid multiple threshold triggering.

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