EEE2045F BJT Amplifier Practical

Student Name: Student Number:

Instructions:
This practical provides you with hands-on experience building a common-emitter amplifier by
designing an amplifier for an electret microphone

Please read the questions carefully and treat the lab equipment with respect.

Only one student is allowed per workstation.

Please raise your hand once you have completed the relevant questions to be signed-off by a
tutor or other staff member.

Once you have completed the lab please switch off the equipment and return the cables to their
appropriate locations. You will only receive a final sign-off once your workstation is clear.

Once you have been fully signed-off please scan (you can use camera based scanners) your full
practical sheet and upload it as a PDF to the relevant Amathuba assignment page.

Tutor Signature Tutor Name Date

Amplifier Design (Q1)

Amplifier base-collector

gain measurements (Q3.1, Q3.2, Q3.3)

Amplifier overall gain measurements (Q3.4)

Distortion measurements (Q3.5, Q3.6)

Microphone testing (Q3.8)

Workstation Clear

Table 1: Questions requiring tutor sign-off

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Part 1: Pre-practical Preparation

In this practical, you will be designing, building, and testing a BJT-based microphone pre-amplifier1 for an
electret microphone.
As part of this, we will also introduce you to a few basic design concepts, starting with a user requirement
analysis, understanding the required technical specifications, designing to meet specifications etc. Please read
the lengthy design process example on the Amathuba page as it will give you significant context and reasoning
around certain decisions.
Please refer to Appendix 1 for the microphone datasheet.
Some of the basic technical specifications that were derived in the Amathuba page are listed in Table 2. Not
all of these are applicable to the practical, but it should give you a better understanding of what a larger
system might have to consider.

Parameter Specification

Physical Dimensions < 40 mm x 40 mm x 15 mm (L x W x H)

Frequency Range 50 Hz - 16 kHz

Input Sound Level 50 dB SPL - 90 dB SPL

Recording time 40 mins

Table 2: Technical Specifications

To design an appropriate pre-amplifier you would need to take your understanding of the requirements and
specifications to calculate gain, select component values etc.
1. Calculate the minimum rms voltage produced by the microphone that would need to be measured.

2. Calculate a suitable voltage gain required by the amplifier for the ADC to measure the lowest rms voltage
produced by the microphone. HINT: Use the ADC voltage resolution, you may have to see what gain is
required if the reference voltage is 1.2 V compared to if the reference voltage is 3.6 V.

3. Calculate the maximum peak voltage produced by the microphone that would need to be measured.
1 This is a term often used to describe an amplifier that does not have significant power output to drive a load. There could be

different requirements for pre-amplifiers compared to power amplifiers, but for now, we will ignore these alternative requirements

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4. Calculate the dynamic range required by the ADC.

5. Does the selected 12-bit ADC have sufficient dynamic range?

Amplifier design
Now that you have a voltage gain requirement, you can start designing a common-emitter amplifier.
To make things a bit easier assume that as part of the design process, a battery-based power supply with a
6V regulated output is going to be used as the power supply i.e. VCC = 6V . This should give you enough
voltage to work with for this amplifier.
You still need to decide on the Q-point, appropriate resistor values, and capacitors. This can be daunting
considering the numerous decisions you still need to make. One more simplification we can make is to choose
a DC voltage for VE .
VE is the voltage developed across RE and it helps to stabilise the biasing conditions for IB . If VT H −
IB RT H − VBE = VE , and the base-emitter junction voltage fluctuates (we assume VBE = 0.7 V but this
can change with temperature), then IB can vary greatly depending on the value of VE .
If VE is large, then VBE has less impact, but the trade-off is that it will limit the maximum output voltage
swing. For now, let’s choose VE = 1 V .
6. When choosing a Q-point you need to decide on suitable values for VCEQ and ICQ . Sometimes you
do not have enough constraints to provide exact values, and you need to make assumptions or choose
reasonable values. For example,
• An easy option is to pick VCEQ = 12 VCC as this will give close to maximum voltage swing in either
direction.
• You could play it safer and assume you want to keep signals further away from saturation. In which
case VCEQ = 12 (VCC − Vce(sat) ) might be better.

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• Perhaps you want to choose lower DC biasing currents to minimize DC power usage and prolong
battery life (as long as your amplified signals don’t hit cut-off).
• Perhaps you look at the datasheet for a transistor and pick a collector current that results in
favourable characteristics, but this also depends on how well the manufacturer has characterized
their devices.

The output impedance of the microphone will be 2.2 kΩ if using the datasheet configuration with a 2.2 kΩ
resistor between the power supply and the drain of the microphone’s internal JFET amplifier. You might
need to draw the model for a JFET and convert to a Thevenin equivalent voltage form to see why the drain
resistor would be the impedance of the microphone once connected to power.
This could impact the overall gain of the amplifier if the total input resistance to your amplifier is not high
enough.
7. Choose biasing resistors to set the necessary VB . Keep in mind that these resistors also contribute to
the total input resistance.

8. Determine the total external resistance, RE , required to produce the desired DC emitter current and
voltage.

9. Choose RC to produce the desired VCEQ .

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10. Calculate the gain of the amplifier from collector to base using the values determined above, assuming
no bypass capacitor is used for now.

11. Does this meet the minimum gain required for the application?

12. If your gain is too low, use a swamped emitter resistance to increase the gain, while keeping the biasing
conditions the same. What is the magnitude of your new gain?

13. Draw the amplifier schematic with resistor values included. Keep RC the same value, and make sure that
the total emitter resistance RE stays the same even if using a swamped emitter resistance, otherwise
your biasing conditions will be different. There may be slight changes when implemented due to available
resistor values.

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14. You will need to determine the minimum bypass and coupling capacitors values appropriate for the
frequency response specifications, although in the lab you will only have a limited selection of capacitors
to choose from. These will depend on the resistor values that you select. For the load resistance we will
assume RL ≥ 1M Ω, as ADC’s typically have high input resistance.

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Part 2: Connecting your Common-Emitter Amplifier

With your breadboard ready to go you may proceed to your lab session. In the lab, you will be able to apply
a range of
For this practical, you will use
You will need access to:

• A DC power supply
• Your breadboard with the common-emitter amplifier components populated
• An oscilloscope
• A signal generator

If you have all the things you need proceed with the following:
1. Set your DC power supply to output 6V .
2. Connect the negative terminal of your power supply to the negative rail of your breadboard and the
positive terminal of your power supply to the positive rail of your breadboard. You decide which rail is
which.
3. Set your signal generator to produce a sinusoidal output voltage at a frequency of 1 kHz and an
amplitude of 100 mV (200mV p-p). To get such small voltages for testing you can gently pull the
‘AMPL’ dial towards you (you should feel it extend out) on the signal generator and it will attenuate
the signal to provide much smaller voltages. Please push it back in once you are finished to not confuse
the next person to use the signal generator.
4. Connect a 2.2kΩ resistor in series with the signal generator to emulate the output impedance that the
microphone will have.
5. Please use a large resistor (RL ≥ 1M Ω) to act as a load (ADC’s typically have very large input resistances
so this is fine).
6. Connect your amplifier circuit to the power rails.
Congratulations you have hopefully created a common-emitter amplifier! The next question is does it perform
the way we expect? For that, we have to take some measurements.

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Part 3: Testing your Common-emitter Amplifier in the Lab

At this point, you have a very simple setup on your breadboard that is now connected to a power supply
Now we will take some measures and do some experimentation by
1. (DEMONSTRATE) Measure the peak-to-peak voltage and the mean of following signals and confirm
with a tutor:
• The base voltage, Vb , using CH1 of your scope.
• The collector voltage, Vc , using CH2 of your scope. *Measure before the coupling capacitor.

Node Pk-to-Pk Voltage Mean Voltage

Base

Collector

Table 3: AC voltage measurements

Please take care when evaluating what is shown on your oscilloscope, as at first glance it might not show
you what you expect to see. Check the scales for both channels, as well as the origin (the triangle mark
to the left of the signals). Autoset might fail you!
2. Use these signals to determine the magnitude of the voltage gain of your amplifier. How does it compare
to your theoretically calculated value?

3. If your gain is different your expected values what are possible reasons?

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4. (DEMONSTRATE) Now use CH1 to measure the signal before the coupling input capacitor, and use CH2
to measure across the load. Use this to determine the overall gain of the amplifier from the collector to
the input signal. How does this compare to the gain from collector to base? What causes this difference?

5. (DEMONSTRATE) Increase the amplitude of your input signal until your collector voltage begins to
distort (you may need to push the ‘AMPL’ dial back in to get larger voltages that cause distortion).
Did the top or bottom of your collector voltage begin to distort first? Or was it simultaneous? Is this
distortion due to driving the BJT into saturation, cutoff or both?

6. What is value of the voltage when distortion begins to occur? You may need to add measurements
for max or min, or use a cursor. Does this correspond to the expected value at which distortion would
start? *HINT: Use your Q-point values to determine what amplitudes for your output signal will result
in distortions and compare that to the measurements.

7. Instead of using the signal generator, you will now be able to use a microphone for testing. Connect the
2.2 kΩ resistance between the power supply and an unused track on your breadboard. See the microphone
schematic diagram on the datasheet for how it should be connected e.g. Connect your microphone to
the 2.2 kΩ, as well as to the input coupling capacitor. The ground lead of the microphone is the one
that has solder connections to the outer shield casing.

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8. (DEMONSTRATE) A tutor will come around and play a few sample sounds to check your amplifier
output. Confirm that the collector voltage responds to changes in sound levels as expected.
Unfortunately we do not have the means to measure accurate sound pressures etc. as this would need
an anechoic chamber and a well controlled sound source. So this is more for fun than rigorous amplifier
testing.
9. Make sure you know how your working circuit was connected, as we will use the same circuit and
transition to a soldered circuit on veroboard. Do not discard your components.

END

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1 Appendix A: MDO9765 Microphone Datasheet

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