Selecting the Best Resistor Technology for the Application

Vishay engineering director Yuval Hernik has a brief primer posted on EDN discussing considerations when selecting resistors for your design. Resistors seem like - and are - the simplest of electronics elements (other than wires), but a thoughtless selection could spell doom as surely as the wrong transistor or transformer. Aside from special properties that must be accounted for in high frequency circuits (stray reactance, composition), there are 'design centering' needs to account for tolerances in resistance, temperature coefficient, and mechanical environment.

Posted December 2012

RF Cafe began life in 1996 as "RF Tools" in an AOL screen name web space totaling 2 MB. Its primary purpose was to provide me with ready access to commonly needed formulas and reference material while performing my work as an RF system and circuit design engineer. The World Wide Web (Internet) was largely an unknown entity at the time and bandwidth was a scarce commodity. Dial-up modems blazed along at 14.4 kbps while tying up your telephone line, and a lady's voice announced "You've Got Mail" when a new message arrived...