In the earlier post, basic common emitter amplifier design, I made reference to increasing the gain of the amplifier by bypassing the emitter resistor R[SIZE="1"]E[/SIZE].

In this case the gain referred to is the AC gain, which is the signal gain, and which is the gain we are primarily interested in with regard to audio amplifiers. The gain previously calculated was the DC gain, which was numerically identical to the AC gain, but since the amplifier was decoupled from the preceding stage with a capacitor, there was no DC applied to the transistor other than that provided by the bias network, which set the standing current to 1mA and the output voltage to 10V. DC gain and offset is important, because a decoupling cap can be avoided in some cases, but not here.

In the earlier post the gain was stated to be –R[SIZE="1"]C[/SIZE]/R[SIZE="1"]E[/SIZE]. This was a simplification, and, more strictly the gain is –R[SIZE="1"]C[/SIZE]/(R[SIZE="1"]E[/SIZE]...

The amplifier is probably the single most important composite circuit element in electronics. Certainly such familiar devices as radios and music systems would be impossible without amplifiers. The very large majority of amplifiers these days are solid state, that is, they use transistors. While there are many types of transistors, the first mass-produced transistors were BJTs, or bipolar junction transistors, and understanding transistor amplifiers, for most people, begins with these.

The transistor has three terminals and can be arranged in three basic amplifier configurations, the common emitter, common base (or grounded base) and common collector or emitter follower amplifiers.

Common base amplifiers are not commonly employed at lower frequencies as, amongst other reasons, they have a low input impedance, although they can be found in amplifiers for e.g. moving coil microphones. They are sometimes employed as current buffers, having a current gain of 1,...