Common Emitter (CE) RC coupled amplifier

The circuit diagram of a CE RC coupled amplifier with voltage divider bias/self-bias is

shown in the Fig.1. The signal to be amplified is applied to the base and amplified
output signal is taken from the collector. Emitter is made common to both input and
output.

In RC coupled amplifier the output of one stage is coupled to the next stage through a
resistance-capacitance network (here RC and CC2) and hence called RC coupled
amplifier.

Fig.1: Single stage CE RC coupled amplifier.

In the Fig.1, voltage divider bias/self-bias network is composed by R1, R2, RE and RC.
Normally, voltage-divider bias is the best for stabilization among the other biasing
network. The voltage across R2 forward biases the base-emitter junction. RE (emitter
resistance) improves thermal stabilization. For AC signals, RC may be considered as a
load.

The coupling capacitor CC2 couples the output signal (AC components) of the one stage
to the next and blocks DC components from one stage to the next. If DC does not block,
it will alter the Q-point (operating point) of the next stage. This may cause distortion in
the signal.
The Q-point is determined by the supply voltage VCC together with resistances R1, R2, RE
and RC.

The emitter bypass capacitor CE has very small reactance at the lowest signal frequency,
and thus minimizes the AC (small-signal) feedback to the input. This improves the AC
gain of the amplifier.

The voltage gain of one stage of the RC coupled amplifier is

In polar form the same can be written as

| |

where and and at room temperature

In a CE amplifier, the input and output is 180˚ out of phase at mid-frequency range. The
minus sign in the Eqn.3 is attributed to this phase shift. The voltage gain can also be
represented in dB (decibel), as

( )

Frequency Response characteristics of the amplifier

The variation of the magnitude and phase angle of the gain of an amplifier with
frequency is referred to as frequency response characteristics of the amplifier. The
amplitude of input signal is kept constant.

A plot of the magnitude of the voltage gain | | with frequency for single stage of RC
coupled amplifier is shown in the Fig.2a. The plot of the phase angle of the voltage
gain ( ) with frequency is shown in the Fig.2b. The frequency scale can be taken either
simply or in log scale ( ). The gain scale can be taken either in simply gain or in
dB.

The frequency response characteristics have three regions.

 1. The mid-frequency range – where the voltage gain | | is approximately constant
and the phase angle is 180˚ over a range of frequencies.
2. The low frequency range – where the gain | | decreases and the phase angle
increases over with decreasing frequency below the mid-frequency range.
3. The high frequency range – where the gain | | in falls off and the phase angle
decreases below 180˚ with increasing frequency above mid-frequency range.

Fig.2: Frequency response of RC coupled amplifier. (a) Gain v/s frequency. (b) Phase angle v/s
frequency.

The fall of | | and the increase of over 180˚ with decreasing frequency in the low
frequency (LF) range is attributed to the coupling capacitors Cc. As the reactance of a
capacitor increases with decreasing frequency, voltage drop across Cc becomes more at
low frequencies. In addition, at low frequencies, emitter bypass capacitor CE cannot
effectively bypass the ac signal to ground. This results in a small amount of negative
feedback, which reduces the gain further.
The decrease of | | and the fall of below 180˚ in the high frequency (HF) range are
due to the short circuiting effect of the junction capacitances of the transistor (mainly,
collector-base junction capacitance and base-emitter junction capacitance), as well as the
wiring capacitances appearing parallel across the output and input. Another reason is
the drop of current gain at high frequencies.

The two important parameters in frequency response are the half – power frequencies.
At these frequencies, the power gain of the amplifier drops to half of the mid-frequency
power gain. Voltage gain at half power frequencies is ⁄√ , where is the mid-
frequency gain.

The frequency in the low frequency range, where the magnitude of the voltage gain,
| | | |⁄ √ , is defined to be the lower half-power frequency (or lower cut-off
frequency). If the gain is in dB, this point is 3dB below the maximum gain | |(that is,
( ( ⁄√ ) ). At , the corresponding is 225˚.

Similarly, in the high frequency range, where the magnitude of the voltage gain,
| | | |⁄ √ , is defined to be upper half-power frequency (or upper cut-off
frequency). If the gain is in dB, this point is also 3dB below the maximum gain | |. At
, the corresponding is 135˚.

Hence, a CE amplifier cannot be used for amplifying signals of very low and very high
frequencies. Thus, we must define the effective frequency of operation of this amplifier.
The frequency range over which the amplifier can be effectively used is its bandwidth.

The range of frequencies between and is called the bandwidth (BW) of the
amplifier. That is, .