Project of Electronics Lab (ELE 251)
The Amplifier Circuit : Common base amplifier
Students Names and IDs :
• أحمد مستريحي2018975017
• مأمون الشمالي2017980001
Group number : 8
Section No : 8
Instructor Name : ريما حجاوي.م
NOTE: The Video of the project is uploaded on youtube in the following
link :
Objectives:
Design a common base amplifier that meets the following parameters and
conditions :
1) Input impedance in the range of (100 Ohm -15 K Ohm).
2) Output impedance in the range of (4 K Ohm-10 K Ohm).
3) No load voltage gain is greater than 10.
4) Suitable value of resistors to guarantee the Q point of the amplifier in active
region .
Introduction:
The design will be conducted using circuit maker software, in this report we are
going to discuss the theoretical and practical procedure in which the project was
designed.
The common base amplifier is a type of bipolar junction transistor (BJT)
configuration, where the base terminal of the transistor is a common terminal to
both the input and output signals, hence its name common base (CB). The common
base configuration is less common as an amplifier than compared to the more
popular common emitter, (CE) or common collector, (CC) configurations but is still
used due to its unique input/output characteristics.
For the common base configuration to operate as an amplifier, the input signal is
applied to the emitter terminal and the output is taken from the collector terminal.
Thus the emitter current is also the input current, and the collector current is also
the output current, but as the transistor is a three layer, two pn-junction device, it
must be correctly biased for it to work as a com mon base amplifier. That is the base-
emitter junction is forward-biased.
Theoretical analysis :
Figure 1 shows voltage divider configuration of BJT, with the input signal , output
signal, bypass capacitors and coupling capacitor added it is turned on into common
base configuration. The main goal is to find suitable values for resistances to reach a
voltage gain more than 10, however this will be discussed later in the procedure
part.
In this part we are going to discuss the formulas that will be used in our project.
From the AC equivalent model, we can conclude that :
After showing the formulas would be used , now we move to procedure part.
Procedure :
In order to make sure that we are in the active region of the transistor operation, we
need to assume a value for VCC and then the VCE will be equal to the half of it or in
that range .
The assumption is that VCC =22 V and VCE = 11 V .
To meet the design requirements the input impedance (re) will be 510 Ohm , the
output resistance (RC) will be 7.6 K Ohm , thus, the voltage gain will be 14.9.
Now that we have chosen our values, we start finding variables :
IE = 51 uA
IE = IC in the voltage divider configuration .
VCE = VCC – IC (RC + RE)
RE = 208.086 K Ohm
VE = IE*RE =10.6124 V
VB = VE + VBE = 10.6124 + 0.7 = 11.3124 V where VBE = 0.7 V
VB = VCC * (RB2/(RB1+RB2) …………. We can assume RB2 = 2.2 K Ohm .
Then RB1 = 2.078 K Ohm.
All capacitors will be 115uF.
Software :
As it was mentioned earlier the software to be used is circuit maker , the following
diagram represents output and input of the circuit using 1p-p and 10 kHz signal
generator , the design is attached as circuit maker file in the project file.
The error here is that the signal didn't maintain a perfect sinusoidal signal, this is
due to the variation in :
i. Frequency.
ii. Capacitors values.
iii. The round-off errors in the formulas derived.
Conclusion:
A Common Base Amplifier is less commonly used that common emitter amplifier. It
is used to provide voltage gain without any current gain. It is used as a Voltage
Amplifier or Buffer in some high frequency applications.
Based on the above analysis, we can conclude the following about a common base
amplifier :
1. It has relatively high voltage gain.
2. Current gain is less than or sometimes approximately equal to 1.
3. The input impedance is low.
4. The output impedance is high.