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• Reference is fixed at ground, common mode is close to 0 so the amplifier doesn’t necessarily need a very high CMRR

• Low voltage drop in a shunt means both nodes act as a “ground”, potentially causing a ground loop. This can be bad for electrical noise, especially if we interface with the load. This is because the ground of the monitored circuit is slightly higher than System Ground. Some Analog circuits will really hate this. This is why low side is normally used for isolated systems or a system where the load isn’t noise sensitive.

• Bus Shorts won’t be detectable

Hall-Effect Sensors :

Now, let’s finally talk about a different technique. Shunt Resistors are nice and all, but one downside is that they don’t provide isolation. In addition, they aren’t very power efficient at higher loads(Recall P = I^2 * R, so if we wanted to measure with a 1mOhm resistor 100A, that’s 10W of heat….. that’s a lot for a resistor).

Recall back to Electricity and Magnetism courses(maybe in your engineering course, or high school physics) that flowing current produces a magnetic field around a conductor(Faraday’s Law of Induction). Now, let’s surround this conductor in an magnetic core.

(to be finished, see here)

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