An electronic amplifier, amplifier, or (informally) amp is an electronic device that increases the power of a signal.

It does this by taking energy from a power supply and controlling the output to match the input signal shape but with a larger amplitude. In this sense, an amplifier modulates the output of the power supply. There are four basic types of electronic amplifier: the voltage amplifier, the current amplifier, the transconductance amplifier, and the transresistance amplifier. A further distinction is whether the output is a linear or exponential representation of the input. Amplifiers can also be categorized by their physical placement in the signal chain

A practical bipolar transistor amplifier circuit The four basic types of amplifiers are as follows:

Voltage amplifier This is the most common type of amplifier. An input voltage is amplified to a larger output voltage. The amplifier's input impedance is high and the output impedance is low. Current amplifier This amplifier changes an input current to a larger output current. The amplifier's input impedance is low and the output impedance is high. Transconductance amplifier This amplifier responds to a changing input voltage by delivering a related changing output current.

Transresistance amplifier This amplifier responds to a changing input current by delivering a related changing output voltage. Other names for the device are transimpedance amplifier and current-to-voltage converter.

Input and output variables

The four types of dependent sourcecontrol variable on left, output variable on right Electronic amplifiers use one variable presented as either a current and voltage. Either current or voltage can be used as input and either as output, leading to four types of amplifiers. In idealized form they are represented by each of the four types of dependent source used in linear analysis, as shown in the figure, namely: Input Output I I I V V I V V Dependent source Amplifier type Current controlled current source CCCS Current amplifier Current controlled voltage source CCVS Transresistance amplifier Voltage controlled current source VCCS Transconductance amplifier Voltage controlled voltage source VCVS Voltage amplifier

Each type of amplifier in its ideal form has an ideal input and output resistance that is the same as that of the corresponding dependent source:[5]

Amplifier type Current Transresistance Transconductance Voltage

Dependent source CCCS CCVS VCCS VCVS

Input impedance 0 0

Output impedance 0 0

Conduction angle classes

Class A 100% of the input signal is used (conduction angle = 360). The active element remains conducting[8] all of the time. Class B 50% of the input signal is used ( = 180); the active element carries current half of each cycle, and is turned off for the other half. Class AB Class AB is intermediate between class A and B, the two active elements conduct more than half of the time Class C Less than 50% of the input signal is used (conduction angle < 180).

Class A

Class-A amplifier Amplifying devices operating in class A conduct over the whole of the input cycle. A class-A amplifier is distinguished by the output stage being biased into class A (see definition above). Subclass A2 is sometimes used to refer to vacuum-tube class-A stages where the grid is allowed to be driven slightly positive on signal peaks, resulting in slightly more power than normal class A (A1; where the grid is always negative), but incurring more distortion.

Class B

Class-B amplifier Class-B amplifiers only amplify half of the input wave cycle, thus creating a large amount of distortion, but their efficiency is greatly improved and is much better than class A. Class-B amplifiers are also favoured in battery-operated devices, such as transistor radios. Class B has a maximum theoretical efficiency of /4. ( 78.5%) This

is because the amplifying element is switched off altogether half of the time, and so cannot dissipate power. A single class-B element is rarely found in practice, though it has been used for driving the loudspeaker in the early IBM Personal Computers with beeps, and it can be used in RF power amplifier where the distortion levels are less important. However, class C is more commonly used for this.

Class AB

Class-B pushpull amplifier

Class AB is widely considered a good compromise for audio power amplifiers, since much of the time the music is quiet enough that the signal stays in the "class A" region, where it is amplified with good fidelity, and by definition if passing out of this region, is large enough that the distortion products typical of class B are relatively small. The crossover distortion can be reduced further by using negative feedback

Class C

Class-C amplifier Class-C amplifiers conduct less than 50% of the input signal and the distortion at the output is high, but high efficiencies (up to 90%) are possible. The usual application for class-C amplifiers is in RF transmitters operating at a single fixed carrier frequency, where the distortion is controlled by a tuned load on the amplifier. The input signal is used to switch the active device causing pulses of current to flow through a tuned circuit forming part of the load.