BJT Circuit Analysis

The Bipolar Junction Transistor (BJT) is an extremely common electronic device to all
forms of electronic circuits. It can be used for a number of useful applications such as
an amplifier, a switch, a buffer, an oscillator, a nonlinear circuit – so forth.

The BJT is made by P and N type semiconductor material, which should be familiar
from the study of diodes. The BJT is a three terminal device (Fig 1).

Collector

Base

Emitter

Figure 1 – The BJT

The three terminals are Base, Collector and Emitter. The emitter terminal always has an
arrow. The collector is always on the opposite side of the emitter and the base is the
other remaining terminal on the left. Note that this is the conventional schematic
diagram of a BJT transistor. Furthermore, there are two types of BJT transistors. They
are the NPN type, and the PNP type. Figure 2 illustrates this:
e
c c e

N P
b
b
b P b N

N P
e
c
e c
(a) NPN (b) PNP

Figure 2 – The two types of BJT

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The letters b, e, and c have been used for abbreviations for the base, emitter and
collector terminals respectively. An NPN transistor is always drawn with the arrow
pointing outwards whilst the PNP transistor always has the arrow pointing inwards.
And of course, remember that the arrow is always the emitter terminal. So which type is
the transistor in Fig 1? – It is NPN. The other diagrams shown in Figure 2 illustrate
why the transistors are called either NPN or PNP. It’s simply due to the semiconductor
material used for each terminal.

Now, lets take a more detailed look:

Ic Ie

Ib Ib

Ie Ic

Figure 3.

The arrows show the direction of DC current flow for both the NPN and PNP cases. In
both cases the base current (Ib) is a very small current in the order of microamps whilst
the collector current (Ic) and emitter current (Ie) are larger and in the order of
milliamps. Note that for the NPN transistor, the base current flows into the transistor
but for the PNP transistor, the base current flows out the transistor. Also note Ic and Ie
always flow in the same direction and in the direction of the (black) arrow, the same
arrow that tells us whether the transistor is PNP or NPN.

Now for the voltages:

Vc

Vb

Ve

The voltage at the base is normally written as Vb.

The voltage at the collector is normally written as Vc.
The voltage at the emitter is normally written Ve.

That part was easy, but what about the voltage between the collector and the emitter? Is
it written as Vce or Vec? The convention is that the first subscript letter is the voltage
that you are measuring and the second subscript letter is the reference. That means, if:

Vc = 6V (The voltage at the collector is 6 volts)

Ve = 2V (The voltage at the emitter is 2 volts)

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Then Vce is 4V because the voltage at the collector is 4V higher than the voltage at the
emitter. Also, Vec = -4V because the voltage at the emitter (measuring point) is 4V
lower than the voltage at the collector (reference point). This concept is important and
If you’re a bit lost read it again. The following diagram should summarize. This is the
convention used for measuring voltages between terminals of the NPN and PNP
transistors. The reason for this is that in these examples the first subscript letter is
usually of higher voltage than the second, hence all variables listed below will have
positive values.
Veb
Vcb

Vec
Vce

Vbc
Vbe

Figure 4.

Transistor DC Parameters

There are some important equations we need to look at first. Recall that Kirchoffs
Current Law (KCL) states that the sum of all currents entering a node (a point) must
equal the sum of all currents leaving the node. By taking a look at Fig 3 we can see then
that for both the NPN and PNP transistors:

Ie = Ic + Ib (1) i.e. Current flowing into the transistor (Ic and Ib) equals current
flowing out of the transistor (Ie) for the NPN, and Current in (Ie)
equals current out (Ic and Ib) for the PNP.

There is a parameter called  (Beta) for every transistor, which is a constant. The value
of  for transistors is normally between 50 – 500. Equation 2 states that the collector
current is  times bigger than the base current. Hence  is simply a ratio between
collector and base current. Recall that the base current is relatively small and the
collector current is relatively large.

Ic = .Ib (2).

For a transistor with a  =100 and Ic=1mA, then from equation 2, Ib = 10uA. Run
through this in your head to make sure…

We can now substitute equation 2 into equation 1: The highlight shows the substitution

Ie = .Ib + Ib, which simplifies to:

Ie = (+1)Ib. (3)

We can now substitute equation (2) into equation (3) to obtain:

Ib = Ic/ (equation 2 rearranged)

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Ie = (+1).Ic/ , and rearrange to obtain:


Ic  Ie
(   1)

We now define a new parameter  (alpha) where


 (4)
 1

Hence:

Ic = .Ie. (5)

And that’s it. I highly recommend you go through the mathematics yourself and verify
every step that I have done. Only after you do this will you fully understand.

In summary you should definitely try to remember the first two following equations as
they crop up all the time. It’s also handy to remember the third one.

Ic = .Ib
Ie = (+1)Ib
 = /+1

E.g. For the transistor with  = 100,  = 100/(100+1) = 0.99

Hence from equation 5 you can see that Ic  Ie. This is true for all transistors with high
. Now take a look at the NPN transistor in Figure 3 again. The reason Ic is only
approximately equal to Ie is because of the small base current that adds in to make Ie
just a little bigger. You are now ready to do DC analysis of transistor circuits:

DC Analysis

The DC Analysis of transistor circuits involves solving for all (or most of) the currents
and voltages in the circuit. The most important DC parameters to solve are Ic and Vce.
There is a definition called the “Q-point” of a transistor, which is simply the Values of
Ic and Vce that are present in the transistor circuit. So if you are ever asked to find the
Q point of a transistor, solve for Ic and Vce. Lets look at the following circuit in Figure
5 overleaf. I’ve named the resistors Rb, Rc and Re to mark the base, collector and
emitter resistances respectively. Vcc is usually used for the power supply voltage and
the ground symbol is also shown. The first step in the DC analysis of any transistor
circuit is to solve for one of the unknown currents, i.e, Ic, Ie or Ib. If you solve for one
of these unknowns, the other two can be found just buy using equations 2 and 3 and the
given value of . The recommended way of solving for one of the currents is to write a

Va

V1 V2

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Kirchoffs Voltage Law (KVL) loop. Recall that KVL states the sum of all voltages
around a closed loop equals zero.

Compute the parameters of this circuit (=100).

Figure 5.