Class D Amplifier

The term "class D" is sometimes misunderstood as meaning a "digital" amplifier. While some class D amps may indeed be controlled by digital circuits or include digital signal processing devices, the power stage deals with voltage and current as a function of non-quantized time. The smallest amount of noise, timing uncertainty, voltage ripple or any other non-ideality immediately results in an irreversible change of the output signal. The same errors will only lead to incorrect results in digital amplifiers when they become so large that a signal representing a digit is distorted beyond recognition. Up to that point, non-idealities have no impact on the transmitted signal. The difference between digital and analogue signals is that digital signals are subsequently interpreted as numbers whereas in analogue signals the exact waveform matters.[1]
[edit]Signal modulation
The binary waveform is derived using pulse-width modulation (PWM), pulse density modulation (sometimes referred to as pulse frequency modulation), sliding mode control (more commonly called "self-oscillating modulation" in the trade.[2]) or discrete-time forms of modulation such as delta-sigma modulation.[3]
The most basic way of creating the PWM signal is to use a high speed comparator ("C" in the block-diagram above) that compares a high frequency triangular wave with the audio input. This generates a series of pulses of which the duty cycle is directly proportional with the instantaneous value of the audio signal. The comparator then drives a MOS gate driver which in turn drives a pair of high-power switches (usually MOSFETs). This produces an amplified replica of the comparator's PWM signal. The output filter removes the high-frequency switching components of the PWM signal and recovers the audio information that the speaker can