FINAL PROJECT

VARIABLE GAIN AMPLIFIER WITH

OUTPUT STAGE OPTIMIZATION
FOR AUDIO AMPLIFIER
APPLICATIONS
EE 332 AC
June 8, 2015
NAME
Anh Tuan Ngo
Josiah Lim
Minhhue H. Khuu

STUDENT ID

Table of Contents:
1.

INTRODUCTION ...................................................................................................................................... 3

2.

PURPOSE .................................................................................................................................................. 3

3.

OVERALL STRUCTURE BLOCK DIAGRAM .................................................................................... 3

4.

LIST OF COMPONENTS ......................................................................................................................... 4

4.1
4.2
4.3

5.

STAGE 1: DIFFERENTIAL AMPLIFIER ....................................................................................................... 4

STAGE 2: GAIN CONTROL CE BJT AMPLIFIER WITH VARIABLE COLLECTOR RESISTANCE .................... 4
STAGE 3: COMPLEMENTARY CLASS-AB OUTPUT STAGE ....................................................................... 4

CIRCUIT DESIGN .................................................................................................................................... 5

5.1
5.2
5.3
5.4

STAGE 1: DIFFERENTIAL AMPLIFIER ....................................................................................................... 5

STAGE 2: GAIN CONTROL CE BJT AMPLIFIER WITH VARIABLE COLLECTOR RESISTANCE .................... 5
STAGE 3: COMPLEMENTARY CLASS-AB OUTPUT STAGE ....................................................................... 7
COMPLETE CIRCUIT ................................................................................................................................ 9

6.

CIRCUIT SIMULATION .......................................................................................................................... 9

7.

CIRCUIT TESTING ................................................................................................................................ 11

8.

RESULTS................................................................................................................................................. 14

9.

CONCLUSION ........................................................................................................................................ 15

1. Introduction
This project uses the knowledge we have acquired over the course of the quarter to create a
simple three stage audio amplifier. In this project, we will create the amplifier with (1) input stage
using a differential amplifier from Lab 4 Procedure 4, (2) gain stage using a PNP BJT Common
Emitter Amplifier from the output stage of Lab 4 Procedure 4, and (3) the output stage using a
slightly modified Darlington Follower from Lab 5 Procedure 4.

2. Purpose
This project will meet the following specification requirements (Table 1):
Table 1. Project Specification Requirements.
Input Signal Specification
Amplifier Specification

Testing Equipment
Audio Quality

Input Signal Voltage: 200 mVpp

Input Source Impedance: 50
Output Power: 0 1 W (0 Vpp to 8.0 Vpp)
Output Load Impedance: 8
Idling power: Less than 0.5 W
Powered By: +/- 10 V DC
Software: Multisim
Hardware: Power Supply, Signal Generator, Oscilloscope,
DMM
No Distortion

Features: the circuit will be capable to taking an input signal of 200mVp-p and producing an
output signal from 0Vp-p to 8Vp-p, or 1W.
Rating: This circuit is only rated for these specifications and going over the limit will cause
clipping and distortion.

3. Overall Structure Block Diagram

As mentioned before, the audio amplifier will be designed in three stages. Each stage has a
particular purpose and will be discussed in greater detail when we examine each stage separately.
The overall structure of the audio amplifier is shown as a block diagram in

Figure 1. Block Diagram of the Audio Amplifier.

The reason why there are three stages is because each stage of the amplifier has a particular
functionality that will help us achieve our specification requirements.

The first stages function is to filter the noise and remove distortion from the input signal.
This is important because we want to amplify only the input signal, if we do not have the first
stage, then there is a possibility of filtering noise from the input signal. As a result, the first stage
removes any form of audio distortion.
The second stages function is to amplify the audio signal using a PNP BJT CE amplifier. The
goal is to increase the input signal from 200 mVpp ranging from a 0 mVpp (0 W) to 8.0 mVpp (1
W). As a result, the second stage will allow us to vary the gain of the audio amplifier.
The third stages function is to boost the output current and increase the power efficiency.
This is done by using the Darlington follower, which decreases the output resistance which
increases the output current and power efficiency under any load. The reason why we used the
Darlington follower is because it is an AB-class amplifier that fixes the distortion from a B-class
amplifier and has better efficiency than an A-class amplifier. As a result, the third stage will allow
the amplifier to have better power efficiency under load.

4. List of Components
4.1 Stage 1: Differential Amplifier
(3) 2N3904 NPN BJT
(2) 2N3906 PNP BJT
(1) 100 k resistor
(1) 20 k resistor
(1) 1 k resistor
(1) 1 k trimpot

4.2 Stage 2: Gain Control CE BJT Amplifier with Variable Collector

Resistance
(1) 2N3906 PNP BJT
(1) 15 k resistor
(1) 43 k resistor
(1) 10 k trimpot
(1) 470 resistor

4.3 Stage 3: Complementary Class-AB Output Stage

(4) 1N4148 diodes
(2) 4.7 k resistor
(1) TIP30 PNP Power BJT
(1) TIP29 NPN Power BJT
(1) 2N3904 NPN BJT
(1) 2N3906 PNP BJT
(1) 8 resistor
(1) 10 F capacitor

5. Circuit Design
5.1 Stage 1: Differential Amplifier
The first stage was a differential amplifier used to filter out the noise from the input signal as
shown in Figure 2. The differential amplifier also made the input resistance higher, which will
reduce the amount of power wasted at the input side of the audio amplifier by reducing the amount
of current flowing through the differential amplifier.

Figure 2. Audio Amplifier, Stage 1, Differential Amplifier.

The input is the base of Q2 transistor and the base of Q3 transistor is grounded to set the
differential amplifier to a single ended input. The Q4 and Q5 transistors, are used to create a current
mirror to increase the amount of resistance at a larger level than what a resistor along would create.
The Q3 transistor is used to improve the current source for the differential pair which greatly
increases the common-mode rejection ratio. The R4 1 k potentiometer is used to balance the
voltage gain of this stage slightly, but is primarily used to balance the bias of the circuit so that the
output voltage will not distorted when by adjusting the value of the potentiometer.

5.2 Stage 2: Gain Control CE BJT Amplifier with Variable Collector

Resistance
The second stage of our overall circuit consists of a transistor (PNP) that implements a simple
common-emitter stage with a load resistor ( ). This adds some final gain and current drive to the
output pin of the second stage, following from the active load pair in the first stage. The other three
resistors (620, 43k, and 15k) provide bias stabilization for this stage to keep the transistor in
forward active region.

Since the output of the previous stage is the input signal of this stage, the pair of active loads
has benefit of routing both sides of the differential signal into the input to this stage. This forms a
differential to single-ended converter when combining stages 1 and 2. Figure 3 shows the
schematic of the second stage amplifier.

Figure 3. Second stage PNP CE amplifier with variable gain output.

The design requirements specify a 0W to 1W output power. To achieve this specification, the
voltage across the 8 load is calculated as follows: 1
, and
8 2.8

4
8

. The input is a 200mV peak to peak signal, which means that
the overall gain of the circuit should be between 0 and 40. The upper bound gain of 40 would
provide an 8V peak to peak waveform, and the lower bound gain would give 0W output.
For a small signal analysis, the terminal voltage gain of the second stage is given by

To achieve a gain of 40, we had to look at the small signal model and calculate the operating Q
point of the second stage. Using Multisim, the collector current is simulated to be 2.8mA, as shown
in Figure 4. This gives a transconductance value of 0.11S. The terminal gain is then calculated to
be approximately 60 when the collector resistance is 10k, and 0 when the collector resistance is
0. However, when the output waveform reaches about 9 or 10 V peak to peak, we see clipping
start to occur.

Figure 4. Simulating the Q-point collector current for measurement of terminal

gain.
With the variable resistance, Figure 5 shows the output waveform of the circuit, capable of
reaching 8V peak to peak when the collector resistance is tuned.

Figure 5. Simulating output gain when variable resistor is tuned.

5.3 Stage 3: Complementary Class-AB Output Stage

The third stage consists of a complementary Class-AB output stage, which acts like an emitter
follower. However, emitter followers do not have good power efficiency, so we use the class-AB
output stage instead. The class-AB output stage operates the transistor when it delivers current to
the load, resulting in a power efficient configuration for output buffering and current boosting. It

can be used to boost the output current of the operational amplifier. Some more key properties of
the third stage is that it has low output resistance, unity gain, and no distortion for the output.
Figure 6 shows the schematic of the third stage complementary class-AB output.
The class AB output stage uses a complementary matched pair of transistors in emitter
following mode. Due to this, we use four diodes instead of two in the lab procedure so that we can
match the voltage appropriately. We use TIP29 and TIP30 transistors for more heat tolerance as
the transistors get warm to the touch while operating the amplifier. Class AB gives us about 78.5%
power efficiency.
Since we need the output power to be less than 0.5W, we designed the third stage so that it
would provide a current of less than 10mA. The calculations led us to use resistor values 4.7k.
The voltage gain of the third stage is a unity gain. We also added a feedback resistor to control the
clipping and gain. Figure 7 shows simulation of the gain.

Figure 6. Third stage complementary class-AB output stage.

Figure 7. Simulation of unity gain in third stage.

5.4 Complete Circuit

Finally, we implemented a 100 k as a negative feedback loop to stabilize the output voltage.
The final circuit can be seen in Figure 8.

Figure 8. Audio Amplifier, Complete Circuit.

6. Circuit Simulation
We simulated the circuit using Multisim 13. We built the exact circuit shown in Figure 8. We
first measured the power consumption when there was no input voltage source. To do this we
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simply grounded the input voltage from the differential amplifier stage of our circuit. We broke
the circuit from the top power supply to the top rail and measured the current running from the
power supply to the top rail. We measured a current of roughly 1.016 mA. The measurement is
shown in Figure 9.

Figure 9. Idle Current Consumption.

After measuring the idle current consumption we measured the power by multiplying the
current with the applied voltage source, which was 20 V.

1.016

20

2.032

We obtained an idle power consumption of 2.032 mW, which meets the specification
requirements.
Next we measure the output power we could generate with our amplifier. We first measure
the 0 W power deliver across an 8 load with a bypass capacitor. The waveform is shown in
Figure 10. The red waveform indicates the input signal of 200 mVpp and the green waveform
indicates the output waveform. The output waveform has a dc offset of 9.348 V but has roughly
a 0 Vpp, which generates 0 W, which meets our required specifications.

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Figure 10. 0 Watt Power Output.

By adjusting the potentiometer at our gain stage of our audio amplifier, we can increase the
power output to 1.0 W, as shown in Figure 11.

Figure 11. 1 Watt Power Output.

The waveform that was simulated has an output voltage that is slightly higher than the 8 Vpp
we were aiming. As such there is a little bit of distorted clipping at the bottom, but it is very
negligible.
Overall, we were able to meet our required specifications. We created an amplifier that had
varying output ranging from 0 W to 1 W and has an idling power consumption of roughly 2 mW.

7. Circuit Testing
Next we designed the circuit we simulated. We built the circuit with the exact parts listed in
the circuit schematic. The end result looked like the image shown in Figure 12.

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Figure 12. Actual Audio Amplifying Circuit.

Next, we followed exactly what we did for the simulation. We first measured the idling power,
by measuring the idling current (as shown in Figure 13) and multiplying with the voltage
delivered.

0.9086 20
1.817

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Figure 13. Actual Idling Power.

We then measured the 0 W output power and the 1 W output power as shown in Figure 14
and Figure 15. The 0 W output power still had a 9.37 V DC offset with a 0 Vpp wavefrom
generating 0 W. The 1 W output power was able to generate a 8 Vpp voltage wave which generates
1 W of power output.

Figure 14. Actual 0 W Output Waveform.

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Figure 15. Actual 1 W Output Waveform.

From our actual measurements and simulation we were able to hit both required specifications
and both simulation and actual simulation were pretty similar to one another.

8. Results
As shown in Table 2, the circuit design met all the requirements and specifications for this
final lab. We were able to get 8Vp-p without distortion and manipulate the gain as desired. The
idling power and power consumption for the circuit were also within specifications.
Some tradeoffs for this project were having to use more diodes than in the original lab
procedure. This helped us match the voltage coming off the Darlington pair transistors. Also, the
temperature of the transistors in the third stage were fairly hot, so we had to use TIP29 and TIP30
so they would not burn. The cost of this circuit is expensive because we had to purchase TIP29
and TIP30.
Table 2. Results from circuit demonstration and requirements met
Parameter
Input Voltage
Output
Input Voltage
Output

Design Specification
0.2Vp-p
Output Power 0.0W
Distortion
0.2Vp-p
Output Power 1.0W
Distortion

Test Results
Flat line, 0V
Flat line, 0W
None
8Vp-p = 2.8Vrms
2.8V2 / 8 = 1W
None

Load (8)
Idling Power < 1W

8.2 resistor
0.09mA * 20V = 0.18mW

Output

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Cost Analysis:
11 resistors: $1.10
8 2N390X BJT: $2.40
2 Power BJT = $2.00
4 1N4148 Diode = $1.20
Total: $6.70

9. Conclusion
Overall, the major requirements of this final project were met. The specification of 8Vp-p,
power consumption, and idling power were within range. It was a functional audio variable gain
amplifier that successfully achieved the minimum gain needed. One important thing to mention is
that when going above 10V on the output, the waveform starts to clip. However, since this design
is not meant to go above 8Vp-p, our circuit works as expected. One way to improve our circuit is
to find a way to tune the amplifier without having so many transistors so that we are able to lower
the cost of our circuit. Also, another possible improvement is to find ways to achieve higher quality
of sound. However, the quality of sound from our circuit showed no distortion, but it would be
worthwhile to research how manufacturers design high quality sound systems.

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