Chapter 6

- Amplifiers: Strengthening the Signal

In modern electronics, an amplifier plays a highly role in strengthening the input signal it
receives. This strengthened signal then can be used to power devices such as speakers and WiFi modems which receives a constant stream of information and operates in accordance to it.

Electronics Signals
Before examining amplifiers, we have to first understand how a circuit transmits information.
We have already seen the light and temperature detector from the previous chapter. Generally
speaking it is the signal that is transmitted through the circuit.
There are many ways in which a signal can be transmitted; such as light and sound as long it
conveys information. For this chapter we will be focusing on electronic signal. Furthermore
one form of signal can be converted into another form. For electronic signals:

Other forms signals is be converted into electronic signal by a sensor.

An electronic signal is converted to another form of signal or energy by a transducer.

Sensors and transducers are a class of devices based on their function in an electronic circuit.
For example a microphone is a sensor that converts sound into electronic signals, while a
speaker is a transducer that converts electronic signals into sound.
What are electronic signals? So far in our study of electronics we have only looked at situations
where the voltage and current remains constant over time, transmitting a steady stream of
energy to the devices.
On the other hand, an electronic signal is a current or voltage, which usually fluctuates over
time, that represents the information received the sensor. When the current or voltage is plotted
out over time, the shape of the graph represents the information based on the sensor. A simple
example will illustrate this:

Example Consider the following temperature sensor constructed using a fixes resistor and a
positive coefficient thermistor with the electronic signal being the output voltage

read

across the thermistor:

At higher temperature, the resistance across the thermistor is higher, thus

is higher.

Suppose the temperature sensor is placed in a room that is initially hot, then becomes cold. The
electronic signal will look something like this:

Hence the electronic signal transmits the information regarding the temperature and it cooling
down is being transmitted to an appropriate device it is connected to; could be an airconditioner switch or a computer plotting out the graph of temperature over time.
The reason for the need for amplifiers is that in transmission of electronic signals, the voltage
and current are kept really low to avoid power loss and electrical hazards; as there is no need to
transmit high voltage as long the information is transmitted. Amplifiers are then used to
strengthen the received signal.

Linear Amplifiers
As mentioned, an amplifier is a device that serves to
strengthen an electronic signal. It has the following symbol
shown on the right:
is the input electronic signal, while

is the strengthened output electronic signal. Take

note the amplifier symbol is only used in block diagrams as the actual electrical design in a
circuit diagram is highly complex so we will not be considering them here.
to produce

To show how does an amplifier amplify

graphs out

for every

is via a characteristic graph, which

. Typically the characteristic graph of an amplifier looks like this:

We will only be focusing on linear amplifiers where the characteristic graph is just a straight
line. We will see shortly that the linear amplifier simply apply the three basic transformation;
to produce

dilation, reflection and translation, to the graph of

Taking a closer look at the characteristic graph, there are three crucial bits of information that
tells us how

will be:

1. Gain denoted by ; which is given by the gradient of the slanted part characteristic
graph:

Which can be rearranged to:

The gain of an amplifier measures how many times of

changes. For example if

50, and

will change when

increases by 0.1 ,

will increase by 5.0 .

If gain is positive, the amplifier is called non-inverting, while if gain is negative, the
amplifier is inverting. The reason for it is that inverting amplifiers will flip the
electronic signal around as we will see.
2. Zero-point voltage denoted by

; which is the

value when

equals to zero. It

is the -intercept of the characteristic graph.

3. Clipping input and output voltages; which is the maximum input and output voltage that
can be taken in and given out by the amplifier respectively. This is represented by the
horizontal lines on the characteristic graph.
If

goes beyond the clipping input voltage, the

amplified and

value will not be further

will remain at a constant value of the clipping output voltage.

This results in the distortion of the amplified signal called clipping, which washes out
some of input information.

How these three bits of information do tells us how

is amplified into

? The answer is

that it corresponds to the following three transformations in the following order:

1. Gain corresponds to the dilation factor from the -axis, meaning the voltage is
stretched out to higher values. If gain is negative, there will also be a reflection about
the

axis, hence the term inverting amplifiers.

2. Zero-point voltage corresponds to the vertical translation of the

graph.

3. Clipping corresponds to the cutting out of value higher than the clipping output
voltages, replacing them with horizontal lines.
When clipping occurs, use dashed lines to denote how

will look without clipping

to demonstrate the distortion of the signal.

The following example will illustrate the extraction of these information from a characteristic
graph and how to obtain the output voltage.
Example Consider the following amplifier with the following characteristic:

What is the

when the following

passes through the amplifier?

a.

b.

First to calculate the gain which is the gradient of the slanted portion:
5.0
2.0

5.0
2.0

2 500
Since the gradient is positive, the amplifier is non-inverting and the zero-point voltage
0. So to obtain the graph of
For clipping, it occurs when

, simply dilate
2.0

by a factor of 2500 from the -axis.

5.0 . For the

, which corresponds to

signal in (a), as the maximum and minimum of

1.5

is

which lies within the clipping

voltages, it does not undergo clipping.

For (b) on the other hand, the maximum and minimum of

is 3.0

which falls outside the

5.0 .

range of the clipping voltage, resulting in a clipping at

The output signals are sketched as shown:
a)

b)

Where does the extra voltage come from?

On first sight it seems that amplifiers are violating the conservation of energy. How can an
amplifier create extra voltage seemingly out of nowhere?
The reason for this is that an amplifier operates not by directly strengthening the input voltage,
but rather use the weak the input voltage to control the flow through of a much stronger
voltage source supplied elsewhere by

Hence in an actual amplifier there will be two additional connections, both positive and
negative, to the amplifier that supplies the source voltage for

as shown:

Using the pizza-delivery analogy, an amplifier can be thought of as a gate for

being controlled by

. For non-inverting amplifiers, larger

that is

means the gate is opened

wider, allowing more pizza to be delivered:

With this analogy, it also explains why there is clipping present in amplifiers. Clipping occurs
when

equals

and increasing

will not increase

, as when the gate is fully

opened, further opening it will not increase the amount of voltage flowing through it.

A Mathematical Look at Amplifiers

For those that are familiar with transformations of graphs from mathematics, a linear amplifier
is a device that performs dilation, reflection and translation (apart from the clipping). Why is
that case? Let us take a more mathematical look at it and see why.
A linear amplifier is a device that transform

into

, in mathematical terms, an amplifier

can be seen as a function where:

For a linear amplifier, considering the slanted portion of the characteristic, it can be easily
modelled by a linear equation:

Where

is the gain, and

is the zero-point voltage, confirming that

is a function of

Given the graph of

is then simply obtained by the following sequence of

transformation:
1. Dilate by a factor of
2. If

from the -axis, disregarding the sign.

is negative, reflect about the -axis.

3. Translate by

in the -direction.

Take note this only applies to a linear amplifier. For non-linear amplifier, it no longer
corresponds to a straight-forward transformation of dilation, reflection and translation making
it a lot more complex, which is left for more advanced study.

Application: Wireless Communication by Amplitude Modulation (AM)

With the use of LED, photodiode and amplifiers, wireless communication can be achieved via
amplitude modulation, or AM for short, as explained.
In order to transmit electronic signal wirelessly, an LED can be used to transmit the signal as it
is giving off light, and photodiode as the receiver as it detects light:

The light produced by LED is called the carrier wave. The light used for transmission are
usually invisible electromagnetic waves at a specific wavelengths lower than visible light, such
as infrared and microwaves. The carrier waves can be thought of as the messenger.
The photodiode used to receive signal and convert that back into voltage. The photodiodes can
be tuned to only detect that specific wavelength so it only receives information from
appropriate transmitters.

The electronic signal, which are information encoded in the variation of voltage, will modify
the brightness of light given off by the LED. This process called amplitude modulation, as the
amplitude of the light wave changes.
Suppose there are no electronic signal, reflected by a flat-line voltage, the brightness of the
light transmitted by the LED will remain the same, resulting in a transmission of light waves at
a constant amplitude (recall that light is an electromagnetic wave with its amplitude reflecting
its brightness):

The current produced by the diode is then flat, reflecting that no signal has been received.
Suppose now that there is an electronic signal and is reflected by a periodic rise and fall of
voltage (a sinusoidal variation), the amplitude of the carrier wave will also rise and fall
accordingly to the electronic signal, encoding the signal to be sent off:

The photodiodes then detects the variation of amplitude and converts that back into the original
electronic signal. This process is called demodulation, where the receiver decodes the received
encoded light transmitted by the LED.

Graphically the shape of the electronic signal will create an envelope for the carrier wave to
modify its amplitude.
AM is not the only form of wireless transmission of information. It is a primitive form of
wireless communication that suffers from a serious flaw; it is very susceptible to interference.
Anything that will affect the amplitude of the carrier wave will distort the transmitted signal.
An improved form of wireless transmission we have now is the frequency modulation, where
the frequency of the carrier wave is modulated rather than the amplitude.
Nonetheless, AM still serves as an excellent example how wireless transmission of information
can be achieved, and the principles still apply to more sophisticated methods.