The Common Emitter Amplifier Circuit

In the Bipolar Transistor tutorial, we saw that the most common circuit configuration for an NPN
transistor is that of the Common Emitter Amplifier and that a family of curves known commonly as the
Output Characteristics Curves, relates the Collector current (Ic), to the output or Collector voltage (Vce),
for different values of Base current (Ib). All types of transistor amplifiers operate using AC signal inputs
which alternate between a positive value and a negative value so some way of "presetting" the amplifier
circuit to operate between these two maximum or peak values is required. This is achieved using a process
known as Biasing. Biasing is very important in amplifier design as it establishes the correct operating point
of the transistor amplifier ready to receive signals, thereby reducing any distortion to the output signal.

We also saw that a static or DC load line can be drawn onto these output characteristics curves to show all
the possible operating points of the transistor from fully "ON" to fully "OFF", and to which the quiescent
operating point or Q-point of the amplifier can be found. The aim of any small signal amplifier is to amplify
all of the input signal with the minimum amount of distortion possible to the output signal, in other words, the
output signal must be an exact reproduction of the input signal but only bigger (amplified). To obtain low
distortion when used as an amplifier the operating quiescent point needs to be correctly selected. This is in
fact the DC operating point of the amplifier and its position may be established at any point along the load
line by a suitable biasing arrangement. The best possible position for this Q-point is as close to the centre
position of the load line as reasonably possible, thereby producing a Class A type amplifier operation, ie.
Vce = 1/2Vcc. Consider the Common Emitter Amplifier circuit shown below.

The Common Emitter Amplifier Circuit

 The single stage common emitter amplifier circuit shown above uses what is commonly called
"Voltage Divider Biasing". This type of biasing arrangement uses two resistors as a potential
divider network and is commonly used in the design of bipolar transistor amplifier circuits. This
method of biasing the transistor greatly reduces the effects of varying Beta, ( β ) by holding the
Base bias at a constant steady voltage level allowing for best stability. The quiescent Base
voltage (Vb) is determined by the potential divider network formed by the two resistors, R1, R2
and the power supply voltage Vcc as shown with the current flowing through both resistors. Then
the total resistance RT will be equal to R1 + R2 giving the current as i = Vcc/RT. The voltage level
generated at the junction of resistors R1 and R2 holds the Base voltage (Vb) constant at a value below the
supply voltage. Then the potential divider network used in the common emitter amplifier circuit divides the
input signal in proportion to the resistance. This bias reference voltage can be easily calculated using the
simple voltage divider formula below:

The same supply voltage, (Vcc) also determines the maximum Collector current, Ic when the transistor is
switched fully "ON" (saturation), Vce = 0. The Base current Ib for the transistor is found from the Collector
current, Ic and the DC current gain Beta, β of the transistor.

Beta is sometimes referred to as hFE which is the transistors forward current gain in the common emitter
configuration. Beta has no units as it is a fixed ratio of the two currents, Ic and Ib so a small change in the
Base current will cause a large change in the Collector current. One final point about Beta. Transistors of the
same type and part number will have large variations in their Beta value for example, the BC107 NPN
Bipolar transistor has a DC current gain Beta value of between 110 and 450 (data sheet value) this is
because Beta is a characteristic of their construction and not their operation.

As the Base/Emitter junction is forward-biased, the Emitter voltage, Ve will be one junction voltage drop
different to the Base voltage. If the voltage across the Emitter resistor is known then the Emitter current, Ie
can be easily calculated using Ohm's Law. The Collector current, Ic can be approximated, since it is
almost the same value as the Emitter current.

Example No1
A common emitter amplifier circuit has a load resistance, RL of 1.2kΩs and a supply voltage of 12v.
Calculate the maximum Collector current (Ic) flowing through the load resistor when the transistor is
switched fully "ON" (saturation), assume Vce = 0. Also find the value of the Emitter resistor, RE with a
voltage drop of 1v across it. Calculate the values of all the other circuit resistors assuming an NPN silicon
transistor.

This then establishes point "A" on the Collector current vertical axis of the characteristics curves and occurs
when Vce = 0. When the transistor is switched fully "OFF", their is no voltage drop across either resistor RE
or RL as no current is flowing through them. Then the voltage drop across the transistor, Vce is equal to the
supply voltage, Vcc. This then establishes point "B" on the horizontal axis of the characteristics curves.
Generally, the quiescent Q-point of the amplifier is with zero input signal applied to the Base, so the
Collector sits half-way along the load line between zero volts and the supply voltage, (Vcc/2). Therefore, the
Collector current at the Q-point of the amplifier will be given as:

This static DC load line produces a straight line equation whose slope is given as: -1/(RL + RE) and that it
crosses the vertical Ic axis at a point equal to Vcc/(RL + RE). The actual position of the Q-point on the DC
load line is determined by the mean value of Ib.

As the Collector current, Ic of the transistor is also equal to the DC gain of the transistor (Beta), times the
Base current (β x Ib), if we assume a Beta (β) value for the transistor of say 100, (one hundred is a
reasonable average value for low power signal transistors) the Base current Ib flowing into the transistor will
be given as:
Instead of using a separate Base bias supply, it is usual to provide the Base Bias Voltage from the main
supply rail (Vcc) through a dropping resistor, R1. Resistors, R1 and R2 can now be chosen to give a
suitable quiescent Base current of 45.8μA or 46μA rounded off. The current flowing through the potential
divider circuit has to be large compared to the actual Base current, Ib, so that the voltage divider network is
not loaded by the Base current flow. A general rule of thumb is a value of at least 10 times Ib flowing
through the resistor R2. Transistor Base/Emitter voltage, Vbe is fixed at 0.7V (silicon transistor) then this
gives the value of R2 as:

If the current flowing through resistor R2 is 10 times the value of the Base current, then the current flowing
through resistor R1 in the divider network must be 11 times the value of the Base current. The voltage
across resistor R1 is equal to Vcc - 1.7v (VRE + 0.7 for silicon transistor) which is equal to 10.3V, therefore
R1 can be calculated as:

The value of the Emitter resistor, RE can be easily calculated using Ohm's Law. The current flowing
through RE is a combination of the Base current, Ib and the Collector current Ic and is given as:

Resistor, RE is connected between the Emitter and ground and we said previously that it has a voltage of 1
volt across it. Then the value of RE is given as:
So, for our example above, the preferred values of the resistors chosen to give a tolerance of 5% (E24) are:

Then, our original Common Emitter Amplifier circuit above can be rewritten to include the values of the
components that we have just calculated above.

Completed Common Emitter Circuit

Coupling Capacitors

In Common Emitter Amplifier circuits, capacitors C1 and C2 are used as Coupling Capacitors to
separate the AC signals from the DC biasing voltage. This ensures that the bias condition set up for the
circuit to operate correctly is not effected by any additional amplifier stages, as the capacitors will only pass
AC signals and block any DC component. The output AC signal is then superimposed on the biasing of the
following stages. Also a bypass capacitor, CE is included in the Emitter leg circuit. This capacitor is an open
circuit component for DC bias meaning that the biasing currents and voltages are not affected by the
addition of the capacitor maintaining a good Q-point stability. However, this bypass capacitor short circuits
the Emitter resistor at high frequency signals and only RL plus a very small internal resistance acts as the
transistors load increasing the voltage gain to its maximum. Generally, the value of the bypass capacitor, CE
is chosen to provide a reactance of at most, 1/10th the value of RE at the lowest operating signal frequency.

Output Characteristics Curves

Ok, so far so good. We can now construct a series of curves that show the Collector current, Ic against the
Collector/Emitter voltage, Vce with different values of Base current, Ib for our simple common emitter
amplifier circuit. These curves are known as the "Output Characteristic Curves" and are used to show how
the transistor will operate over its dynamic range. A static or DC load line is drawn onto the curves for the
load resistor RL of 1.2kΩ to show all the transistors possible operating points. When the transistor is
switched "OFF", Vce equals the supply voltage Vcc and this is point B on the line. Likewise when the
transistor is fully "ON" and saturated the Collector current is determined by the load resistor, RL and this is
point A on the line. We calculated before from the DC gain of the transistor that the Base current required
for the mean position of the transistor was 45.8μA and this is marked as point Q on the load line which
represents the Quiescent point or Q-point of the amplifier. We could quite easily make life easy for
ourselves and round off this value to 50μA exactly, without any effect to the operating point.

Output Characteristics Curves

Point Q on the load line gives us the Base current Q-point of Ib = 45.8μA or 46μA. We need to find the
maximum and minimum peak swings of Base current that will result in a proportional change to the Collector
current, Ic without any distortion to the output signal. As the load line cuts through the different Base current
values on the DC characteristics curves we can find the peak swings of Base current that are equally
spaced along the load line. These values are marked as points N and M on the line, giving a minimum and
a maximum Base current of 20μA and 80μA respectively. These points, N and M can be anywhere along
the load line that we choose as long as they are equally spaced from Q. This then gives us a theoretical
maximum input signal to the Base terminal of 30μA peak-to-peak without producing any distortion to the
output signal. Any input signal giving a Base current greater than this value will drive the transistor to go
beyond point N and into its Cut-off region or beyond point M and into its Saturation region thereby resulting
in distortion to the output signal in the form of "clipping".
Using points N and M as an example, the instantaneous values of Collector current and corresponding
values of Collector-emitter voltage can be projected from the load line. It can be seen that the Collector-
emitter voltage is in anti-phase (-180o) with the collector current. As the Base current Ib changes in a
positive direction from 50μA to 80μA, the Collector-emitter voltage, which is also the output voltage
decreases from its steady state value of 5.8v to 2.0v. Then a single stage Common Emitter Amplifier is
also an "Inverting Amplifier" as an increase in Base voltage causes a decrease in Vout and a decrease in
Base voltage produces an increase in Vout.

Voltage Gain

The Voltage Gain of the common emitter amplifier is equal to the ratio of the change in the input voltage to
the change in the amplifiers output voltage. Then ΔVL is Vout and ΔVB is Vin. But voltage gain is also equal
to the ratio of the signal resistance in the Collector to the signal resistance in the Emitter and is given as:

We mentioned earlier that as the signal frequency increases the bypass capacitor, CE starts to short out the

Emitter resistor. Then at high frequencies RE = 0, making the gain infinite. However, bipolar transistors have

a small internal resistance built into their Emitter region called Re. The transistors semiconductor material

offers an internal resistance to the flow of current through it and is generally represented by a small resistor

symbol shown inside the main transistor symbol. Transistor data sheets tell us that for a small signal bipolar

transistors this internal resistance is the product of 25mV ÷ Ie (25mV being the internal volt drop across the

Base/Emitter junction depletion layer), then for our common Emitter amplifier circuit above this resistance

value will be equal to:

This internal Emitter leg resistance will be in series with the external Emitter resistor, RE, then the equation
for the transistors actual gain will be modified to include this internal resistance and is given as:
At low frequency signals the total resistance in the Emitter leg is equal to RE + Re. At high frequency, the
bypass capacitor shorts out the Emitter resistor leaving only the internal resistance Re in the Emitter leg
resulting in a high gain. Then for our common emitter amplifier circuit above, the gain of the circuit at both
low and high signal frequencies is given as:

At Low Frequencies

At High Frequencies

One final point, the voltage gain is dependent only on the values of the Collector resistor, RL and the Emitter
resistance, (RE + Re) it is not affected by the current gain Beta, β (hFE) of the transistor.

So, for our simple example above we can now summarise all the values we have calculated for our common
emitter amplifier circuit and these are:

Minimum Mean Maximum

Base Current 20μA 50μA 80μA

Collector Current 2.0mA 4.8mA 7.7mA
Output Voltage Swing 2.0V 5.8V 9.3V
Amplifier Gain -5.32 -218

Common Emitter Amplifier Summary

Then to summarize. The Common Emitter Amplifier circuit has a resistor in its Collector circuit. The
current flowing through this resistor produces the voltage output of the amplifier. The value of this resistor is
chosen so that at the amplifiers quiescent operating point, Q-point this output voltage lies half way along the
transistors load line.

The Base of the transistor used in a common emitter amplifier is biased using two resistors as a potential
divider network. This type of biasing arrangement is commonly used in the design of bipolar transistor
amplifier circuits and greatly reduces the effects of varying Beta, ( β ) by holding the Base bias at a constant
steady voltage. This type of biasing produces the greatest stability.

A resistor can be included in the emitter leg in which case the voltage gain becomes -RL/RE. If there is no
external Emitter resistance, the voltage gain of the amplifier is not infinite as there is a very small internal
resistance, Re in the Emitter leg. The value of this internal resistance is equal to 25mV/IE