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thebugger
modified 8 years ago

Voltage Gain From an Emitter Follower

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05:41:00
Okay, basically you won't find this anywhere on the net, tried it already, but here's how to get some voltage gain from an emitter follower. Typically the common collector amplifier has 100% emitter degeneration, which restricts the maximum voltage gain to 1. Once you add the internal resistance of the transistor the voltage gain goes a little below 1. The only thing that restricts the voltage gain is the 100% negative feedback employed by the emitter resistor. If we can somehow take some of the negative feedback off, the voltage gain will increase. Basically this is the way, you tap the load at some point and take an output to feed back to the input. This is basically sort of a bootstrap (not exactly). The voltage gain is then completely independent from the transistor hFe. The gain can be approximated this way. The lower part of the potentiometer divided by the upper one, summed with 1. Av=(3.3/1)+1=4.3 times. Due to loading from the feedback and the load itself and the internal resistance of the transistor, the gain is slightly less, but the formula gives a good estimate. You can try different wiper positions to see how the gain varies.
published 8 years ago
gasboss775
8 years ago
This is fascinating I think that Ill try this on a breadboard soon. I wonder how stable it would be at high gains?
Secuture
8 years ago
Negative feedback can be removed if u use high output resistance signal source. For example ordinary common base resistance amp do the job well. But as we remove negative feedback effect all hfe independence also goes off giving poor amp at all
hurz
8 years ago
Yes, you can remove it and apply 1mV and get almost any gain you want. But as you say sec, performance is muy malo ;-)
hurz
8 years ago
http://everycircuit.com/circuit/4875905533214720
thebugger
8 years ago
Yeah, all amps work best with negative feedback. I even put negative feedbacks on my tube amps, where most audiophiles advice against it.
hurz
8 years ago
As you did years ago too
agentaero
8 years ago
This is interesting! I am not sure where this might be useful in practice, i cant really think of a situation where the drawbacks from floating the source are better than the drawbacks from a common base or common emitter amp. Has anyone used this or seen this used anywhere?
thebugger
8 years ago
Yeah I've tried it, years ago. Didn't have an oscilloscope then, a multimeter at 50Hz measured some gain.
faceblast
8 years ago
secuture out of nowhere
hurz
8 years ago
Xmas is over. Next see 2017?
gasboss775
8 years ago
Have posted a slightly ammended version using an input transformer to give ground referenced input, here: http://everycircuit.com/circuit/4995931548418048
thebugger
8 years ago
Yeah I was slightly surprised to see Secuture commenting. I haven't seen him around lately
thebugger
8 years ago
P.S. You can definitely use some kind of galvanic separation for the signal source, it's advisable, because it'll be hard to couple to any previous stages, while the input is floating.

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