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Precision analog circuits rarely operate in ideal, temperature-invariant environments. That tends to be a problem because temperature variation is one of the most persistent sources of error for these circuits. Transistor junction voltages, resistor values, and carrier mobility all vary with temperature, resulting in drift of voltage references, bias currents, offsets, and gains. In many applications, such as data converters, sensors, and power-management systems, temperature drift directly limits achievable accuracy.

While temperature effects are well understood at the device level, system-level temperature-coefficient (tempco) analysis often becomes complicated due to nonlinear dependencies and mixed circuit behaviors. Although modern simulation tools provide temperature sweeps, it pays for engineers to answer a couple of fundamental questions during the design process:

• Which parameters or devices dominate temperature drift?
• How does circuit topology amplify or suppress these effects?