Circuit for voltage ramping?

Question

I am looking for circuit (or chip) that does voltage ramping?
i.e. the voltage (dc) keeps increasing in steps every few units of time.

Answer 1

If it has to be in steps and not a true ramp, I'd suggest you have your timing clock drive a constant-length pulse generator (sometimes called a "one-shot") which gates a constant-current source into a capacitor. (Higher current and shorter pulse length will make the resulting ramp steeper thus closer to a true step function.) The voltage across the cap will be a stepped approximation to a ramp. If you just need a smooth ramp, simply drive the capacitor with a constant current for the duration of the ramp. The constant current makes the ramp linear. The voltage change rate is I/C. If you don't need linearity you can use a voltage source with a series resistor. Whatever ramp quality you choose, if this is to be a repetitive waveform, you need another circuit such as a one-shot to discharge the cap at the waveform repetition rate. One way to do this is to trigger the reset when the ramp voltage reaches a preset value, or you can just time the pulses that trigger the one-shot. I'm not too up-to-date on chips, but the old 555 timer is versatile and easily adaptable to this kind of application.

Answer 2

A step function is denoted as n*u(t). As you may imagine that is 0 voltage upto given time and then at particular time it jumps to n Volts. now once you retain on with step function to instruments like Op-Amp it can't replace voltage instantly so the output voltage will be like a Ramp and that is going to likely be a Ramp voltage function

Answer 3

https://www.circuitlab.com/circuit/xw65e2/voltage-ramp/