Lecture 2: Review of Basic Circuit

Theory and Amplifiers

Dr. Ying-Khai Teh
EE 330
Fundamentals of Engineering Electronics
Fall 2018
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Review

• Review of Basic Circuit Theory

• Review of Amplifiers
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Voltage and current source

• Ideal voltage source Rs=?

• Ideal current source Rs =?
• How can we convert between them?
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Output voltage / current

• How can we calculate VO / IO ?
• To achieve the maximum power delivery?
• To achieve the maximum VO / IO ?
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Power
• Power = Voltage × Current
= V2/R
= I2R
• Power at load = Vo × Current
= VO2/RL
= IO2RL
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Analog versus Digital

• Information-bearing signals can be either analog or
digital. Nowadays digital circuits dominate.

• Moore’s Law favors digital. Decades ago, many

predicted analog designers would be driven out of
job. Yet, as of today, companies are still hiring
analog designers.

• Why do we still study analog in courses such as

EE330/430/530/…?
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Welcome to the real world. Oops. It is analog.

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Motivation to study analog/mixed

signal/RF/Power Management
• Many electronic systems, particularly those dealing with low signal
amplitudes (biomedical) or very high frequency (high speed
communication) required analog approach.

• Interface circuits between digital and analog real world is

essential.

• Most challenging chip design problems are in analog domain.

• “Analog circuit design is an art.”

• Artists are scarce. Good artists are harder to find. You need some
form of artistic sense when drawing analog layouts (EE530).

• Good analog circuit designers are scarce (very well compensated,

regarded as “artists” because of the “creative” circuit design. This
is because:
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Signals
• Periodic vs Non-periodic (arbitrary)

• Periodic signal can be decomposed as

superposition of multiple periodic sinusoids
(Fourier transform)
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Periodic square wave and the sum of the first five terms of its Fourier series.
Generating square waves using sinusoids?

• F=1/T. ω=2F
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Analog arbitrary signals

• “Real-world” analog signal takes on a
continuous-time and continuous-range of
amplitude values.
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Digital signals
• Digital signal takes on a finite set of discrete values (often
binary) and changes values only at uniformly spaced
points in time.
• Resilient towards noise compared to analog for further
processing and transmission.
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Analog-to-Digital conversion (mixed signal)

• ADC/DAC are circuits that digital world interface
to the continuous-time “real” word at finite
samples per sec.

Figure 1.8 Sampling the continuous-time analog signal in (a) results in the discrete-time signal in (b).
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Review – Amplifier (Analog core circuit)

• Typically used to amplify small signal (µV or mV) range to
mV or V range for further processing.
• Ideal amplifier is assumed to be linear.

(a) Circuit symbol for amplifier. (b) An amplifier with a common terminal (ground) between the input and output

ports.
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Review – Voltage Amplifier

• Amplify voltage signals. Typically used as preamplifier
(Input stage of transceiver).

• What is the voltage gain shown?

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Review – Power amplifier

• Modest voltage gain but large current gain. (Radio driver
stage)
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Review – Gain expressed in dB

• Sometimes gain are expressed in logarithmic scale
instead of linear scale. “Easier” total gain calculation.

• dBm (RF application) To express an arbitrary power P in

mW as x in dBm, or vice versa, the following equivalent
expressions may be used:
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Amplifier power supply

• Amplifier DC power supply sets the rail-to-rail output limit.
Input power (PI) is typically negligible. We want η as high as
possible.
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Amplifier Saturation set by VCC and VEE

• Device scaling – Moore’s Law works against analog as
supply voltage scales down as device becomes smaller.
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Symbol convention – DC and AC

• DC biasing in capital letter. Time-varying AC signal in
small letter.
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Circuit model for amplifiers

• An amplifier typically is built using tens of transistors. We
can simplify the amplifier behavior as two-port model.

• Voltage amplifier can be simplified as 3-element circuit

model (Blackbox).
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Circuit model for amplifiers

• We can study cascaded (multiple-stage) amplifier using
this model.

• What is the overall voltage gain? (Home exercise)

• Why is multiple stage required?

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Four amplifier types (more on this in future) :

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Amplifier frequency response

• Linear amplifier should shows phase shift (ϕ) only. NO
frequency distortion (additional sine/cosine terms).

• Bandwidth
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Amplifier frequency response

• Amplifier behavior can be reduced to either:

• (a) capacitive coupled (b) direct-coupled (c) tuned (bandpass)

Discrete implementation On-chip implementation RF application

• High pass filter network Low pass filter network

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Amplifier non-idealities (distortion)

• Ideal amplifier is assumed to be perfectly linear.

• However, all real amplifier has built-in non-linearity due to

active device (BJT/MOSFET) characteristics itself (Note
that we haven’t even considered NOISE here).

• We will revisit more on this when we study BJT and

MOSFET device physics later.
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Component distortion
• Also, passives are not ideal passives at high frequency.
• For example: Ideal resistor

• Resistor at high frequency.

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Component distortion
• Also, passives are not ideal passives at high frequency.
• Capacitor:

• Inductor:
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What is Distortion?

• When viewing in frequency band, distortion is

mixing up neighboring channels!
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Linear Distortion

• Happens on all filter. Missing frequencies.

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Linear Distortion

• Happens on all filter. Missing frequencies.

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Non-linear Distortion

• Noisy frequency spectrum. Add new frequency.

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Non-linear Distortion
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Non-linearity: by power series

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Definition of harmonic distortion (HD)

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Amplifier non-idealities (Distortion)

*W. Sansen, “Distortion in elementary transistor circuits”, IEEE Transactions on Circuits and
Systems II, Vol 46, No. 3, March 1999.
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Amplifier non-idealities (Distortion)

• When fully differential signaling is used, the even order (2nd,
4th etc) order harmonic distortions cancel each other.
• Therefore, in typical circuit design, third order harmonic
distortion (HD3) component is most dominant distortion
component.
• For frequency mixers, distortion caused by inter-modulation
is also to be considered. On spectrum analyzer:
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Summary

• Review of Basic Circuit Theory

• Review of Amplifiers