ECE 2201 : ELECTRICAL AND

COMPUTER ENGINEERING LAB 1

EXPERIMENT 6 :

SMALL SIGNAL CS AMPLIFIERS

DATE OF EXPERIMENT : 30/10/2012

DATE OF SUBMISSION : 6/11/2012

GROUP MEMBERS :

SAJED IMTENANUL HAQUE

MATRIC NO : 1025299

MUHAMMAD AFIQ BIN ABDUL GHANI

MATRIC NO : 1119649

AMEERUL HAKEEM BIN MOHD HAIRON

MATRIC NO : 1119483

ABDUL MUIZ BIN IBRAHIM

MATRIC NO : 1112031

OBJECTIVES

To demonstrate the ac operation of a typical common-source amplifier.

To demonstrate the differences between the ac operating characteristics of a typical JFET
amplifier and those of a typical BJT amplifier.

THEORY
In electronics, a common-source amplifier is one of three basic single-stage field-effect
transistor (FET) amplifier topologies, typically used as a voltage or transconductance amplifier. The
easiest way to tell if a FET is common source, common drain, or common gate is to examine where
the signal enters and leaves. The remaining terminal is what is known as "common". In this
example, the signal enters the gate, and exits the drain. The only terminal remaining is the source.
This is a common-source FET circuit. The analogous bipolar junction transistor circuit is
the common-emitter amplifier.
The common-source (CS) amplifier may be viewed as a transconductance amplifier or as a
voltage amplifier. As a transconductance amplifier, the input voltage is seen as modulating the
current going to the load. As a voltage amplifier, input voltage modulates the amount of current
flowing through the FET, changing the voltage across the output resistance according to Ohm's law.
However, the FET device's output resistance typically is not high enough for a reasonable
transconductance amplifier (ideally infinite), nor low enough for a decent voltage amplifier (ideally
zero). Another major drawback is the amplifier's limited high-frequency response. Therefore, in
practice the output often is routed through either a voltage follower (common-drain or CD stage),
or a current follower (common-gate or CG stage), to obtain more favourable output and frequency
characteristics. The CSCG combination is called a cascode amplifier.

RESULTS
Snapshots of the input and output waveforms are given below:

CALCULATIONS

Open-load voltage gain, AV :

Percentage error :

Approximated input impedance of amplifier : 1.314M

Percentage error between measured input impedance and rated value of RG :

DISCUSSION

For this experiment, the properties of the JFET were observed, as well as the result of a commonsource amplifier. First, the DC values were recorded. From the measurements, the value of VGS was
always negative. This is because the JFET was of n-channel type, which means the drain-to-source
channel was composed of an n-type semiconductor while the gate is of p-type semiconductor.
Increasing the width of the depletion region requires the junction to be reverse-biased, so the
voltage at the source was greater than the voltage at the gate, causing the VGS to be negative.
Aside from the polarity, the magnitude of VGS affects the conductivity of the drain-source channel.
According to the experimental results, increasing the resistance of the potentiometer increased the
magnitude of VGS. This is because the increase in potentiometer resistance caused the current in
the source to drop. The reduced conductivity of the source-drain channel implies that the
depletion region became wider, which indicates that the magnitude of VGS has increased.
The values of ID and VGS were used to calculate gm, a parameter involved with AC analysis. The AC
analysis depends directly on the DC parameters. This is because the current-voltage characteristic
curve of a JFET is not linear. A large AC voltage would yield very unpredictable output waveforms,
since the Q-point would keep changing as the AC input changes. Therefore, the AC voltage needs to
be made very small to keep the changes in the Q-point to a minimum, where the curve can be
approximated to be linear in this tiny range. However, the slope of this linear approximation (slope
= 1/gm) depends on the position of the Q-point, and this is set by the DC values, which are large
enough to control the location of the Q-point. This is referred to as DC biasing.
Then the common-source amplifier was investigated. This is very similar to the common-emitter
amplifier of BJTs, with the main difference being that the gate terminal has a current of 0 (since the
junction is reverse-biased). Just as with BJTs, the output voltage will be in the opposite direction as
the supply voltage, thus resulting in a 180 degrees phase difference between the input and the
output.
One difference between the BJT experiment that was observed is that, unlike the input, the output
does not oscillate about 0 V, but rather, it oscillates about ~1.08 V, and the output is always
positive. This is because the DC voltage is always positive and is super-imposed to the AC output
voltage, causing the sinusoidal output to shift upwards. In order to eliminate this DC offset, a
capacitor should be used to block the DC to yield a purely AC output.

CONCLUSION
The characteristics of a JFET have been observed in this experiment. Although the gate terminal
draws in zero current, the gate voltage directly affects the conductivity of the drain-source channel.
It can be used as a common-source amplifier similar to a common-emitter amplifier with BJTs. The
resulting output will have a 180 degrees phase shift from the input.