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30 Oct.

09 Page 1 of 8 Barasa Mwanza


Direct-coupled amplifiers
In electronics, direct coupling (also called direct-wired contact and conductive charging) is a
way of interconnecting two circuits such that, in addition to transferring the a/c signal (or
information), the first stage also provides a/c bias to the next. Thus, there is no need for a dc
blocking capacitor to be used in order to interconnect the circuits, and this method is also
known as dc coupling
A direct-coupled amplifier is an amplifier in which the output of one stage of the amplifier is
connected to the input of the next stage directly without using any reactive components such
capacitors as inductors, transformers, etc. as a result, the frequency response of this amplifier
is quite flat all the way. It is also known as dc amplifier.
The common use of the term DC amplifier does not mean direct current amplifier, as this
typr can be use for both d/c and a/c signals. The amplification of d/c (zero frequency) is
possible only by this amplifier and thus forms the building block of for differential amplifiers
and operational amplifiers.
Advantages
There are several advantages of using this type of amplifier, including:
Simple circuit arrangement as there are minimum number of components, hence
Quite inexpensive (cheap)
Can be used to amplify zero and low-frequency signals
Provides uniform frequency response up to a high frequency. Low cut-off frequency
is zero and upper cut-off frequency is determined by values of the components used.
Disadvantages
In addition to the advantages, there are also known disadvantages. These include:
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Unwanted change in output voltage without any change in input is often observed.
This is caused by temperature variations, aging of components, etc and is referred to
as drift. This drawback can be removed using differential amplifier.
The gain decreases at high frequencies.
Transistor parameters change with temperature, hence output is affected by
temperature variations.
Even if it is a/c, some d/c component is present at the output. This can be removed
using differential amplifier.
Any noise or stray pickup appearing at the input is also present at the output amplified
form, due to high gain
Application
Direct coupled amplifiers are used in TV receivers, computers, regulator circuits and other
electronic instruments. They also form the building block of for differential amplifiers and
operational amplifiers.
Offset error
One advantage or disadvantage (depending on application) of direct coupling is that any DC
at the input appears as a valid signal to the system, and so it will be transferred from the input
to the output (or between two directly coupled circuits). If this is not a desired result, then the
term used for the output signal is output offset error, and the corresponding input signal is
known as input offset error.
Error correction
Temperature drift and device mismatches are the major causes of offset errors, and circuits
employing direct coupling often integrate offset nulling mechanisms. Some circuits (like
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power amplifiers) even use coupling capacitorsexcept that these are present only at the
input (and/or output) of the whole system but not between the individual circuit units inside
the system
Chopper stabilized amplifiers
The best bipolar amplifiers offer offset voltages of 10V and 0.1V/C drift. Offset voltages
less than 5V with practically no measurable offset drift are obtainable with choppers, albeit
with some penalties.
The basic chopper amplifier circuit is shown in the figure below.

When the switches are in the "Z" (auto-zero) position, capacitors C
2
and C
3
are charged to the
amplifier input and output offset voltage, respectively. When the switches are in the "S"
(sample) position, V
IN
is connected to V
OUT
through the path comprised of R
1
, R
2
, C
2
, the
amplifier, C
3
, and R
3
.
The chopping frequency is usually between a few hundred Hz and several kHz, and it should
be noted that because this is a sampling system, the input frequency must be much less than
one-half the chopping frequency in order to prevent errors due to aliasing. The R
1
/C
1

combination serves as an antialiasing filter. It is also assumed that after a steady state
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condition is reached, there is only a minimal amount of charge transferred during the
switching cycles. The output capacitor, C
4
, and the load, R
L
, must be chosen such that there is
minimal V
OUT
droop during the auto-zero cycle.
Chopper stabilized amplifier
The basic chopper amplifier above can pass only very low frequencies because of the
input filtering required to prevent aliasing. The chopper-stabilized architecture shown
below is most often used in chopper amplifier implementations.

In this circuit, A1 is the main amplifier, and A2 is the nulling amplifier. In the sample
mode (switches in "S" position), the nulling amplifier, A2, monitors the input offset
voltage of A1 and drives its output to zero by applying a suitable correcting voltage at
A1's null pin. Note, however, that A2 also has an input offset voltage, so it must correct
its own error before attempting to null A1's offset.
This is achieved in the auto-zero mode (switches in "Z" position) by momentarily
disconnecting A2 from A1, shorting its inputs together, and coupling its output to its own
null pin. During the auto-zero mode, the correction voltage for A1 is momentarily held by
C1. Similarly, C2 holds the correction voltage for A2 during the sample mode. In modern
IC chopper-stabilized op amps, the storage capacitors C1 and C2 are on-chip.
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Note in this architecture that the input signal is always connected to the output through
A1. The bandwidth of A1 thus determines the overall signal bandwidth, and the input
signal is not limited to less than one-half the chopping frequency as in the case of the
traditional chopper amplifier architecture. However, the switching action does produce
small transients at the chopping frequency which can mix with the input signal
frequency and produce in-band distortion.
It is interesting to consider the effects of a chopper amplifier on low frequency 1/f noise.
If the chopping frequency is considerably higher than the 1/f corner frequency of the
input noise, the chopper-stabilized amplifier continuously nulls out the 1/f noise on a
sample-by-sample basis. Theoretically, a chopper op amp therefore has no 1/f noise.
However, the chopping action produces wideband noise which is generally much worse
than that of a precision bipolar op amp.
The figure below shows the noise of a precision bipolar amplifier (OP177/AD707) versus
that of the AD8551/52/54 chopper-stabilized op amp. The peak-to-peak noise in various
bandwidths is calculated for each in the table below the graphs.

Input voltage noise, nV / Hz
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Note that as the frequency is lowered, the chopper amplifier noise continues to drop,
while the bipolar amplifier noise approaches a limit determined by the 1/f corner
frequency and its white noise (see Figure 3.9). At a very low frequency, the noise
performance of the chopper is superior to that of the bipolar op amp.

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Emitter-coupled pair
This is a directly-coupled amplifier (uses no coupling and bypass capacitors). It consists of
two common-emitter transistor amplifiers having their emitters directly-coupled to each
other. Consider the circuit below

This circuit configuration is referred to us a differential amplifier. It is used to overcome the
problems associated with the simple DC amplifier. It is an extremely versatile circuit (have
many different uses).
The circuit consists of two identical transistors with two separate power supplies
+
V
CC
and
_
V
EE
. The positive supply provides the reverse bias and the negative supply provides the
forward bias.
Taking the circuit to be symmetrical (each half is identical to the other half) the quiescent
conditions of the circuit are given as:
v
B1
= v
B2
=
v
E
= -.v
I
C1
= I
C1
= I
C

I = I
C1
+I
C

v
RE
= IR
E
= (v
RE
- .v)
R
C
V
i1
R
C
V
i1
-
V
EE
+
V
CC
I
C2
I
C1
I

R
E
V
O1 V
02
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v
O1
= v
CC
-I
C1
R
C
= v
CC
-I
C
R
C

v
O2
= v
CC
-I
C2
R
C
= v
CC
-I
C
R
C

The difference output voltage under ideal conditions is,
v
O
= v
O1
-v
O2

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