Power & Regulation#

Supplying clean, stable energy. Every circuit needs power, and the quality of that power directly affects everything downstream. Noise on a supply rail becomes noise in every signal path. A drooping voltage becomes a drifting operating point. Power regulation is not glamorous, but it’s where reliability starts.

This section covers both linear and switching approaches to regulation, along with the reference voltages and decoupling techniques that keep analog circuits behaving.

What This Section Covers#

• Linear Regulators — Dropout, dissipation, heat, and when simplicity wins.
• Switching Regulators — Buck, boost, and buck-boost topologies, efficiency vs. noise, and when to accept the complexity.
• Reference Voltages — Why “stable” is hard, and the circuits that get close.
• Decoupling & Bypassing — Local energy storage and noise suppression at the source.