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Fundamental investigation of
the comparative behaviour
of small-signal BJT Darlington
and cascode amplifiers
a a
Trevor E. Browne , Aniweta I. Onuorah ,
a a
Abhishek Motayed & S. Noor Mohammad
a
Howard University, Electrical Engineering
Department, 2300 Sixth Street NW, Washington,
DC 20059, USA
Published online: 09 Nov 2010.

To cite this article: Trevor E. Browne , Aniweta I. Onuorah , Abhishek Motayed &
S. Noor Mohammad (2001) Fundamental investigation of the comparative behaviour
of small-signal BJT Darlington and cascode amplifiers, International Journal of
Electronics, 88:7, 737-749, DOI: 10.1080/00207210110055510

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00207210110055510

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 INT. J. ELECTRONICS, 2001, VOL. 88, NO. 7, 737 ± 749

Fundamental investigation of the comparative behaviour of small-signal

BJT Darlington and cascode ampli® ers

TREVOR E. BROWNEy, ANIWETA I. ONUORAHy,

ABHISHEK MOTAYEDy, and S. NOOR MOHAMMADyz

In-depth investigation of the fundamental physics underlying various

characteristics of the Darlington pair with common-collector/common-collector
(C-C/C-C) and common-collector/common-emitter (C-C/C-E) con® gurations and
of the cascode ampli® er with common-emitter/common-base (C-E/C-B)
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con® guration has been performed. Although the investigation is based primarily
on experiments, some Pspice simulations have been made, wherever necessary, to
provide better insight into the characteristics. Both the low-frequency and high-
frequency characteristics of the Darlington pair and cascode ampli® er have been
discussed. The eŒects of emitter resistance on the gain in the C-C/C-C Darlington
pair and of the collector resistance on the gain in the C-E/C-B cascode ampli® er
and C-E ampli® ers have been compared. Load resistance seems to have identical
eŒects on the gain in all the ampli® er circuits. The bypass capacitor has signi® cant
in¯ uence on the frequency response of the devices. For example, the Darlington
pair with C-C/C-E con® guration provides high gain and, for a relatively large
bypass capacitor, gives a large midband width. Sinusoidal signals are less
susceptible to distortion than square wave signals. Output square waves are
distorted most by the cascode ampli® er and distorted least by the C-C/C-C
Darlington pair. The C-C/C-E con® guration of the Darlington pair is superior to
the cascode ampli® er in the sense that it provides high gain and the output square
wave remains largely undistorted even at higher frequencies.

1. Introduction
Most physical signals appear in continuous or analogue form. The characteristics
of these signals are most often manipulated using linear ampli® ers, which change the
amplitude and/or phase of a signal without aŒecting its spectral content. For this
reason, one of the most important concepts and applications in electronic circuits is
ampli® cation. Virtually all electronic analogue, digital, or mixed analogue and digi-
tal systems require ampli® ers for scaling signals to a useful level. The output signals
from these systems are generally weak (in the range of millivolts to microvolts),
possessing a very small amount of energy. So, these signals are often too small in
magnitude to be processed reliably to perform any useful function. An ampli® er may
consist of one or more amplifying devices. The ampli® cation of a system can be
determined in the form of voltage gain, current gain or power gain. Ampli® er circuits
are used in the design of complex analogue components and systems, such as high-
performance operational ampli® ers, analogue-to-digita l and digital-to-analogu e con-
verters, stereo radio equipment, compact disc players, communication receivers and
cellular telephones.

Received 28 August 2000. Accepted 2 February 2001.

y Howard University, Electrical Engineering Department, 2300 Sixth Street NW,
Washington, DC 20059, USA.
z Corresponding author. e-mail: snm@msrce.howard.edu

Internationa l Journal of Electronics ISSN 0020± 7217 print/ISSN 1362± 3060 online # 2001 Taylor & Francis Ltd
http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals
DOI: 10.1080 /0020721011005551 0
 738 T. E. Browne et al.

Of those circuits which consist of a number of stages, each stage provides voltage
gain, and/or impedance level transformation from input to output. These circuits
can, of course, be analysed by considering each transistor to be a stage and analysing
the circuit as a collection of individual transistors. However, certain combinations of
two transistors occur so frequently in such circuits that it is convenient to character-
ize these as two-transistor `subcircuits’ and to regard them together as a single stage
when they occur in ampli® ers (Thornton et al. 1965). The usefulness of these topol-
ogies varies considerably with the technology being used. For example, the
Darlington two-transistor connection is widely used in all-bipolar integrated circuits
to improve the eŒective current gain and input resistance of a basic bipolar transistor
ampli® er. In contrast, the cascode connection achieves a very high output resistance
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and is used in all technologies when that result is desired. The schematic diagram of a
Darlington pair with common-collector/common-collector (C-C/C-C) con® guration
is shown in ® gure 1. The Darlington pair is driven by an AC input signal which is
applied to the base transistor, Q1 . This input signal is applied through the coupling
capacitor C1 , and the series resistance RS . The output signal voltage is obtained at
the emitter of transistor Q2 through the capacitor C2 . The increase in current gain at
the output stage transistor of a Darlington pair is realized by reducing the base
current required to drive the transistors. The Darlington con® guration is equivalent
to a single transistor with a current gain ­ T , which is equivalent to the product of the
current gain of the two individual transistors. The base to emitter voltage VBE of the
Darlington circuit is almost twice the value of VBE for a single bipolar
junction transistor (BJT). The Darlington pair, when used as an emitter follower
(e.g. common-collector± common-collector con® guration), normally behaves as a
voltage follower with a voltage gain of approximately unity.
Low-frequency and high-frequency characteristics of the Darlington pair and
cascode ampli® er have been discussed at length by Fonstad (1995). Like the
Darlington pair, the cascode ampli® er is designed by cascading two transistor ampli-
® ers. However, in this case, a common-emitter (C-E) ampli® er is connected in series
with a common-base (C-B) ampli® er. As shown in ® gure 2, the collector current of

Figure 1. Schematic diagram of the Darlington pair circuit used for the present experiment.
 Comparative behaviour of small-signal amplifiers 739
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Figure 2. Schematic diagram of the cascode ampli® er circuit used for the present experiment.

transistor Q1 , is the emitter current of transistor Q2 . So IC2 º ¬IC1 . Also, it is quite

evident from the con® guration that the load resistance seen by the common emitter
transistor Q1 is the emitter resistance RE of Q2 . Therefore, in the cascode ampli® er
circuit with C-E/C-B con® guration, the C-B ampli® er acts as a current buŒer, which
accepts the signal current from the collector of transistor Q1 . The C-B ampli® er then
delivers an almost equal current to the load with a very high output resistance R0 .
Our goal in this investigation is not to resort to new developments of circuits, but
rather to in-depth investigation of the fundamental physics underlying various char-
acteristics of the Darlington pair and the cascode ampli® er. Although the investiga-
tion is based primarily on experiments, some Pspice simulations have also been
made, wherever necessary, to provide better insight of the characteristics.

2. Experiment
n-p-n BJTs (model CEN 2N2222A 9919) were used for the present experiments.
Unless otherwise speci® ed, various parameters used for the Darlington pair were
RS ˆ 50 «; C1 ˆ 2 mF; R1 ˆ 20 k«; R2 ˆ 5 k«, and VCC ˆ 12 V. The emitter resis-
tance RE and the load RL had diŒerent values for diŒerent sets of experiments.
For cascode ampli® ers, the same n-p-n BJTs were used. The various parameters
used for this circuit are: RS1 ˆ 25 k«; CB1 ˆ 2 mF; CE1 ˆ 10 mF, R1 ˆ 30 k«;
R2 ˆ 4:3 k«, R3 ˆ 5 k«, VCC ˆ 12 V, and CC2 ˆ 1:2 mF. The collector resistance
RC and the load RL had diŒerent values for diŒerent sets of experiments. The eŒect
of RL on the voltage gain was determined by varying RC and keeping RL ® xed.
Similarly, the eŒect of collector resistor RC on the voltage gain was determined by
varying RC and keeping RL ® xed. While studying the eŒect of frequency on the
voltage gain, both RL and RC were kept constant.
 740 T. E. Browne et al.

3. Results and discussions

The variation of voltage gain with emitter resistance RE of the Darlington pair,
and of the voltage gain with the collector resistance RC of a cascode ampli® er and a
C-E ampli® er are shown in ® gure 3. The experimental data show that, as the emitter
resistance RE is increased, the gain of the Darlington circuit decreases. This is
because the resistor RE was originally used to establish the biasing points of the
Darlington pair. Any alteration in the operating points of the circuit leads to an
alteration in the gain. The variation of the gain as a function of RC indicates that the
gain of the cascode ampli® er is higher than that of the C-E ampli® er. However, if a
frequency adjustment is made to both the circuits, the gain of cascode ampli® er
drops to values much lower than the corresponding value for the C-E ampli® er. If
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the small-signal input resistance between the base and the emitter, looking into the
base, is rº1 for transistor Q1 and rº2 for transistor Q2 , the transconductanc e is gm1 for
transistor Q1 and is gm2 for transistor Q2 , the common-emitter current gain is ­ 1 for
transistor Q1 and is ­ 2 for transistor Q2 , and if RC is the collector region resistor and
RL is the load, then the small-signal voltage gain of cascode ampli® er is

Figure 3. Variation of voltage gain as a function of (a) emitter resistance RE for the
Darlington pair, and (b) collector resistance RC for cascode and common-emitter ampli® ers.
 Comparative behaviour of small-signal amplifiers 741
³ ´
rº2
AV ˆ gm1 gm2 …RC jjRL † …1†
1‡­2
Noting that gm2 rº2 ˆ ­ 2 , one can use the approximation
³ ´
rº2
gm2 º1 …2†
1‡­ 2
which leads equation (1) to
AV ˆ gm1 …RC jjRL † …3†
An approximate form of the current gain expression for a common-emitter ampli® er
is
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rº
AV ˆ g …R jjR † …4†
rº ‡ R S m C L
where rº is the small-signal input resistance between the base and the emitter, look-
ing into the base, RS is the input series resistance, and gm is the transconductance .
The main approximation involving equation (4) is that the base resistance RB is
much larger than rº . It is apparent from ® gure 3(b) that the AV versus RC character-
istics for cascode ampli® er is superior to those of common-emitter ampli® er in the
sense that the former is less susceptible to Q-point stability.
The typical parabolic characteristics of the voltage gain AV versus RC plots seems
to stem from di culties in establishing a constant DC current in the emitter of the
BJT. This current and hence the Q-point must be predictable and insensitive to
variations in the collector region resistance RC , temperature T, and the transcon-
ductance gm . Often, owing to small changes in device parameters during processing,
large variations can take place in the value of gm among transistors of the same type.
In the present investigation voltage across RC may be given by IC RC . So, the voltage
drop across the collector-emitter junction is VCE ˆ VCC IC RC IE RE , where IC is
the DC collector current and IE is the DC emitter current. Thus when RC is
increased, VCE is decreased, which caused the Q-point to shift from its original
position. In a common-emitter ampli® er, this shift, on the left-hand side, to a
point corresponding to lower collector current IC led to a reduction in the transcon-
ductance gm , and hence in the voltage gain AV at higher values of RC .
The eŒect of load resistance RL on the voltage gain of both the Darlington pair
and the cascode ampli® er is shown in ® gure 4. For the Darlington pair the voltage
gain can approximately be written as (Sedra and Smith 1991)
…­ ‡ 1†…RE jjRL †
AV º …5†
…­ ‡ 1†…RE jjRL † ‡ RS ‡ rº
where ­ ˆ ­ 1 ­ 2 (Rashid 1999), and
rº ˆ rº1 ‡ …1 ‡ ­ 2 †rº2 jjr02 …6†
Among various parameters, the small-signal input resistance between the base and
the emitter, looking into the base, is rº1 for transistor Q1 and rº2 for transistor Q2 ;
the common-emitter current gain is ­ 1 for transistor Q1 and ­ 2 for transistor Q2 ; RE
is the emitter resistance, RS is the input series resistance, r01 is the Early voltage for
transistor Q1 , and RL is the load.
For the Darlington pair, the AV versus RL plots were obtained for various
values of the emitter resistance RE ; for the cascode ampli® er, these plots were
 742 T. E. Browne et al.
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Figure 4. Variation of the voltage gain as a function of load for (a) Darlington pair, (b)
cascode ampli® er.

obtained for various values of the collector resistance RC . Consistent with

equations (3) and (5), the nature of the curves is essentially the same for both the
Darlington pair and the cascode ampli® er. The gain increases with increasing
load almost linearly until it reaches saturation. As is evident from equation (5),
almost always the voltage gain for Darlington pair AV µ 1. The onset of saturation
takes place at RL º 10 k« in the Darlington pair, and at RL º 50 k« in the cascode
ampli® er. In general, for a certain value of RL , the gain is higher for lower values of
emitter resistance RE in the Darlington pair. But, for a certain value of RL , the gain
is higher for higher values of the collector resistance RC in the cascode ampli® er.
While the highest gain achieved in the Darlington pair was about 1, which is
expected for connection with C-C/C-C con® guration, that achieved in the cascode
ampli® er was more than 11.
The AC analysis data (® gure 5) shows that the gain of the C-C/C-C Darlington
pair remains essentially constant to about unity when the frequency signal of the
input is changed. This is expected because this Darlington pair behaves like a buŒer
 Comparative behaviour of small-signal amplifiers 743
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Figure 5. Variation of voltage gain as a function of frequency for the common-emitter

ampli® er, Darlington pair and the cascode ampli® er.

circuit. The characteristics of the C-E/C-B cascode ampli® er and the C-E BJT ampli-
® er is also compared in ® gure 5. From this ® gure it is seen that the characteristic of
the two is quite similar. As expected, the output signal of the two ampli® ers is an
ampli® ed version of the input signal, which is out of phase with the input signal by
1808. The C-E/C-B cascode ampli® er has a superior frequency response to the C-E
BJT ampli® er, implying that the C-E/C-B cascode ampli® er is more likely to respond
to changes in frequency than a C-E BJT ampli® er. As is apparent from ® gure 5, the
mid-frequency range for the C-E/C-B cascode ampli® er is much wider than that of
the C-E BJT ampli® er. This is consistent with the results of SPICE calculation by
Roberts and Sedra (1997). In the cascode circuit, Q1 is part of a C-E con® guration,
while Q2 is part of a C-B con® guration. Q 1 presents a relatively high-input resistance
to the signal source. The collector signal current of Q1 is fed to the emitter of Q2 , and
hence the load resistance seen by Q1 is simply the input resistance re of Q2 . This low
load resistance of Q1 is largely responsible for the reduced Miller multiplication
eŒect of the capacitor Cm1 extending the upper cutoŒfrequency of the system. As
the collector of Q2 carries a current almost equal to the collector current of Q1 , this is
achieved without sacri® cing any midband gain. Furthermore, being in the C-B con-
® guration, Q2 does not suŒer from the Miller eŒect. So, it does not limit the high-
frequency response. In fact, it acts as a current or an impedance transformer, faith-
fully passing on the signal current to the load while presenting a low load resistance
to the amplifying device Q1 .
The eŒect of frequency on the waveform of output signals of both C-C/C-C
Darlington pair and C-E/C-B cascode ampli® er is shown in ® gure 6. Results
are presented for sinusoidal wave and the square wave at frequencies ranging
between 1 kHz to 1 MHz. For each pair of curves, the upper one is the input and
the lower one is the output. From ® gure 6 it may be noted that, for the C-C/C-C
Darlington pair, the output signals are practically undistorted as compared to the
input signal. It is indeed the case no matter what the frequency is and whether
the input is sinusoidal or the square wave. The situation is quite diŒerent with
the C-E/C-B cascode ampli® er. In this cascode ampli® er, although the output
 744 T. E. Browne et al.
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Figure 6. Waveforms of the output signal from Darlington pair and cascode ampli® er at
various frequencies; (a) square wave from Darlington pair at 1 kHz, (b) square wave
from Darlington pair at 100 kHz, (c) square wave from Darlington pair at 1 MHz, (d)
sinusoidal wave from Darlington pair at 1 MHz, (e) square wave from cascode ampli-
® er at 1 kHz, ( f ) square wave from cascode ampli® er at 100 kHz, (g) square wave from
cascode ampli® er at 1 MHz, (h) sinusoidal wave from cascode ampli® er at 1 MHz

sinusoidal signal remains essentially same as the input sinusoidal signal even at very
high frequency, the output square wave is severely distorted as compared to the
input square wave. The distortion is higher at higher frequencies. For example, at
a frequency of 1 MHz, the output signal is so distorted that it appears as a triangular
wave.
 Comparative behaviour of small-signal amplifiers 745

The primary cause of distortion is the presence of harmonics generated from the
presence of capacitances. The most common origins of capacitance include the dis-
crete capacitors, the stray capacitors contributed by interconnections such as wires
or printed circuit-board paths, and the internal capacitances that originate within the
bipolar junction transistors. Certain elements of the circuit did not respond instantly
to applied signals. So, there were frequency limitations and time delays which are
inherent to electronic devices, and are caused by the inevitable presence of energy-
storage elements (capacitors and inductors) within the circuit. In our experiment,
output signals from both the Darlington pair and the cascode ampli® er suŒered from
distortion. However, in the case of the Darlington pair the peak-to-peak value of the
output signal was essentially unchanged with respect to that of the input signal, and
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Figure 7. EŒect of capacitances on the output square wave forms from cascode ampli® er; (a)
CB1 ˆ 2 mF, CE1 ˆ 10 mF, CB2 ˆ 20 mF, and CC2 ˆ 1:2 mF at 100 Hz, (b) CB1 ˆ 20 mF,
CE1 ˆ 200 mF, CB2 ˆ 200 mF and CC2 ˆ 20 mF at 100 Hz, (c) CB1 ˆ 20 mF,
CE1 ˆ 200 mF, CB2 ˆ 200 mF and CC2 ˆ 20 mF at 1 kHz.
 746 T. E. Browne et al.

hence the distortion could not be detected. In the cascode ampli® er, the peak-to-peak
value of the output signal is much larger than that of the input signal, and hence the
distortion appeared quite large.
The in¯ uence of a given capacitance often occurs at a frequency that lies either
above or below a circuit’ s midband region. Conversely, the midband represents the
frequency range over which circuit behaviour is unaŒected by circuit capacitance.
More speci® cally, a given capacitor is either a high-frequency or low-frequency type,
depending on whether its eŒects are felt above or below the midband range. It is a
high-frequency capacitor if it degrades the gain above the midband range. In con-
trast, it is a low-frequency capacitor if it degrades the gain below the midband range.
Because capacitive impedance is inversely proportional to frequency, a low-fre-
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quency capacitor behaves as a short-circuit in the midband, while a high-frequency

capacitor behaves as an open circuit in the midband. For the present ampli® ers made
of BJTs, the coupling capacitors (C1 for the Darlington pair, and CB1 ; CB2 and CC2
in cascode ampli® er) and the bypass capacitors (C2 for the Darlington pair, and CE1
for the cascode ampli® er) are all low-frequency types. On the other hand, internal
capacitors such as Cº and Cm are high-frequency types.
The output waveforms for the square wave signal of the cascode ampli® er at
100 Hz and obtained with various combinations of coupling and bypass capacitors
are shown in ® gure 7. Severe distortion of the output waveform for the capacitance
combination: CB1 ˆ 2 mF, CE1 ˆ 10 mF, CB2 ˆ 20 mF and CC2 ˆ 1:2 mF clearly indi-
cates that they correspond to the low-frequency range. The distortion is signi® cantly
reduced for the capacitor combination: CB1 ˆ 20 mF, CE1 ˆ 200 mF, CB2 ˆ 200 mF,
and CC2 ˆ 20 mF at 100 Hz, and is essentially eliminated for the capacitor combina-
tion: CB1 ˆ 20 mF, CE1 ˆ 200 mF, CB2 ˆ 200 mF and CC2 ˆ 20 mF at 1 kHz. This
indicates that degree of distortion can be minimized only by the judicious choice
of all four discrete capacitors: CB1 ; CE1 ; CB2 and CC2 , respectively.

4. Conclusion
The behaviour of the cascode ampli® er which has a common-emitter/common-
base (C-E/C-B) con® guration, is quite similar to that of the C-E ampli® er. However,
the very low load resistance seen by the transistor Q1 enables the cascode ampli® er to
have a superior frequency response to that of the common emitter ampli® er. The
output resistance of the cascode ampli® er is very high and no high-frequenc y feed-
back occurs from the output back to the input through Cº as occurs in the C-E
con® guration (Searle et al. 1964). The high output impedance attainable is particu-
larly useful in attaining power supply desensitization in bias reference supplies
and achieving large amounts of voltage gain in a single amplifying stage with an
active p-n-p load.
The Darlington pair with common-collector/common-collector (C-C/C-C) con-
® guration is unique in the sense that the eŒect of transistor Q1 leads to an increase in
current gain through the stage, and an increase in the input resistance. If ­ is the
current gain of each of the two transistors, then the eŒective current gain of the
Darlington pair is ­ eff º ­ …­ ‡ 1†, and the eŒective input resistance is

2v th ­ 2
reff
º ˆ ˆ 2­ rº …7†
IC
 Comparative behaviour of small-signal amplifiers 747

where v th is the thermal voltage v th ˆ kT =q; rº is the internal resistance of Q1 (or Q2 ),

and IC is the collector current of the pair. With IB1 as the base current of transistor
Q1
IC ˆ ­ …1 ‡ ­ †IB1 …8†
Thus reff
º is 2­ times higher than rº for a single BJT (Q1 or Q2 ). Because of its ability
to produce high internal resistance, the Darlington pair can be very useful for pro-
ducing high voltage gain, for example, of a C-E ampli® er, if it is connected in series
with the load RL .
When used as a common-emitter ampli® er, the Darlington pair exhibits a C-C/C-
E connection (see ® gure 8), except that the collector of Q1 is connected to the output
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instead of the power supply. This leads to a reduction in the eŒective input resistance
of the device due to the feedback through the resistance r0 of Q1 . Due to the presence
of the collector-base capacitance of Q1 between the input and the output, the input
capacitance of Q1 is also increased. As a result, the midband width of the ampli® er
decreases as compared to that of the C-C/C-C ampli® er. This is evident from ® gure 9
where we present a gain versus frequency plot for various values of the bypass
capacitor CE . The results are obtained by PSPICE simulation (Herniter 2000) with
input sinusoidal signal of peak-to-peak value of 100 mV. The gain is moderately high
with a value of about 73 in the midband range. Although the bypass capacitor does
not essentially bring any change to the gain, it plays a key role in determining the
mid-band width. The width extends between 3 kHz and 30 kHz for CE ˆ 10 mm, and
between 100 Hz and 20 kHz for CE ˆ 300 mm, and between 50 Hz and 20 kHz for
CE ˆ 1000 mm. Thus, while the upper limit of the cutoŒfrequency range remains

Figure 8. Schematic diagram of a common-collector/common-emitter Darlington pair.

Unless otherwise speci® ed, for the circuit, the input signal was 50 mV, CB ˆ 20 mF,
CC ˆ 100 mF, CE ˆ 100 mF, R1 ˆ 17:2 k«, R2 ˆ 12:8 k«, RC ˆ 2:4 k«, RE ˆ 2:4 k«,
RL ˆ 10 k«, and VCC ˆ 15 V.
 748 T. E. Browne et al.
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Figure 9. Variation of voltage gain AV versus frequency plots of a common-collector/

common-emitter Darlington pair at various bypass capacitors. For the plots all
the parameters are as shown in previous ® gures except the bypass capacitors were
kept constant.

essentially unchanged, the lower frequency range shifts towards lower value with
increasing bypass capacitor. The midband range for C-C/C-E con® guration, even
with the highest possible bypass capacitor, is lower than that of the C-C/C-C con-
® guration, for which it extends between 1 Hz and 700 kHz.
Interestingly, the eŒect of frequency on the waveform of the output signal is less
pronounced in C-C/C-E Darlington pair than in the C-E/C-B cascode ampli® er. For
example, if the signal is a square wave, the output waveform from a C-E/C-B
cascode ampli® er is distorted for frequency as low as 1 kHz. However, the output
waveform from a C-C/C-E Darlington pair remains largely undistorted even at
frequencies as high as 10 kHz. Fourier series analysis indicates that, at higher fre-
quencies ( f ¶ 100 kHz), the distortions of the output waveform from the C-C/C-E
Darlington pair and the C-E/C-B cascode ampli® er are comparable. At 1 MHz, the
magnitude of the ® rst harmonic is almost half of the fundamental, which causes the
output signal to appear more like a triangular wave.

Acknowledgments
The authors wish to thank Mr Dennis E. Johnson, and Mr Raymond E. Bowman
for technical assistance.

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