Design and Simulation of a Microcontroller Based Loudspeaker Protection System Against Amplifier Direct Current (D.C) Offsets

Abstract

A number of failure mechanisms can result in the damage of loudspeakers that are directly connected to an audio power amplifier system. One of such failure modes occurs when the amplifier circuit develops an output d.c voltage, in which case, the loudspeaker coil will be damaged by overheating. D.c offset detection circuits, usually based on simple transistor circuits are normally used to protect the loudspeaker against this failure mode. However, as effective as they are, these circuits can fail in ways that can result in loudspeaker damage. In this work, a microcontroller based circuit that monitors the critical components of a loudspeaker d.c detection circuit, namely the switching transistor and the isolating relay circuit was developed. The hardware of the developed circuit was modelled with Proteus® software and its firmware was written using MikroC® software. The modelled circuit successfully detects the presence of d.c signals and also reports the states of the isolating relay and the switching transistors when these components fail.