TRANSFORMER

COUPLED CLASS A
AMPLIFIER

BY – V.SURYA PRAKASH REDDY

VTU – 9597
B-TECH (ECE)
2nd YEAR

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 INTRODUCTION

 Common Emitter (CE) amplifiers are designed to produce a

large output voltage swing from a relatively small input
signal voltage of only a few millivolt’s and are used mainly
as “small signal amplifiers”.
 However, sometimes an amplifier is required to drive large
resistive loads such as a loudspeaker or to drive a motor in a
robot and for these types of applications where high
switching currents are needed Power Amplifiers are
required.

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 The main function of the power amplifier, which are also
known as a “large signal amplifier” is to deliver power,
(product of voltage and current) to the load.
 Basically a power amplifier is also a voltage amplifier, the
difference being that the load resistance connected to the
output is relatively low.
 Because of these high load currents the output transistor’s
used for power amplifier output stages such as the
2N3055 need to have higher voltage and power ratings
than the general ones used for small signal amplifiers
such as the BC107.

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 Since we are interested in delivering maximum AC power
to the load, while consuming the minimum DC power
possible from the supply we are mostly concerned with the
“conversion efficiency” of the amplifier.
 However, one of the main disadvantage of power amplifiers
and especially the Class A amplifier is that their overall
conversion efficiency is very low, as large currents mean
that a considerable amount of power is lost in the form of
heat

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 Power Amplifier Efficiency
 Percentage efficiency of a amplifier, defined
as the ratio of power output to power input.
(Improves going from class A to B.)

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Where:
η% – is the efficiency of the amplifier.
Pout – is the amplifiers output power delivered to the
load.
Pdc – is the DC power taken from the supply.

For a power amplifier it is very important that the amplifiers

power supply is well designed to provide the maximum
available continuous power to the output signal.

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Two-stage RC Coupled
Amplifier

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Disadvantages of RC Coupled
Amplifier
=>The following are the disadvantages of RC
coupled amplifier.

 The voltage and power gain are low because of

the effective load resistance.
 They become noisy with age.
 Due to poor impedance matching, power transfer
will be low.

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 Transformer coupled Class A
amplifier
 A form of class A amplifier
having maximum efficiency
of 50% uses a transformer
to couple the output signal
to the load.
 The circuit uses a
transformer to step voltage
or current, a review of
voltage and current step-up
and step-down is presented
next.
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10
 Transformer Action
 A transformer can increase or decrease voltage or current
levels according to the turns ratio.
 In addition, the impedance connected to one side of a
transformer can be made to appear either larger or smaller
(step up or step down) at the other side of the transformer,
depending on the square of the transformer winding turns
ratio.
 The following discussion assumes ideal (100%) power
transfer from primary to secondary, that is, no power losses
are considered.

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 VOLTAGE
TRANSFORMATION
 The transformer can step up or step down a voltage
applied to one side directly as the ratio of the turns (or
number of windings) on each side.
 The voltage transformation is given by

 If the number of turns of wire on the secondary side is

larger than on the primary, the voltage at the secondary
side is larger than the voltage at the primary side.

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13
 CURRENT
TRANSFORMATION
 The current in the secondary winding is inversely
proportional to the number of turns in the windings.
 The current transformation is given by

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 IMPEDANCE
TRANSFORMATION
 Since the voltage and current can be changed by a
transformer, an impedance “seen” from either side
(primary or secondary) can also be changed.
 An impedance RL is connected across the transformer
secondary. This impedance is changed by the transformer
when viewed at the primary side (RL).
 This can be shown as follows:

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 If we define a=N1/N2, where a is the turns ratio of the
transformer, the above equation becomes

 We can express the load resistance reflected to the

primary side as:

 where RL’ is the reflected impedance. The reflected

impedance is related directly to the square of the turns
ratio. If the number of turns of the secondary is smaller
than that of the primary, the impedance seen looking into
the primary is larger than that of the secondary by the
square of the turns ratio.
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 DC LOAD LINE

• The transformer (dc) winding resistance determines the dc

load line for the circuit. Typically, this dc resistance is
small (ideally 0) and, a 0-dc load line is a straight vertical
line.
• A practical transformer winding resistance would be a few
ohms, but only the ideal case will be considered in this
discussion. There is no dc voltage drop across the 0-dc
load resistance, and the load line is drawn straight
vertically from the voltage point, VCEQ =VCC.

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Characteristic curve
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 QUIESCENT OPERATING
POINT
 The operating point in the characteristic curve can be
obtained graphically at the point of intersection of the dc
load line and the base current set by the circuit.
 The collector quiescent current can then be obtained from
the operating point.
 If the input signal produces a voltage swing less than the
maximum possible, the efficiency of the circuit at that
time will be less than 25%. The dc bias point is therefore
important in setting the operation of a class A amplifier.

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 AC LOAD LINE
• To carry out ac analysis, it is necessary to calculate the ac
load resistance, looking into the primary side of the
transformer, then draw the ac load line on the collector
characteristic. The reflected load resistance (RL’) is
calculated using the value of the load connected across the
secondary (RL) and the turns ratio of the transformer.
• The graphical analysis technique then proceeds as follows:
Draw the ac load line so that it passes through the
operating point and has a slope equal to 1/R’L (the
reflected load resistance), the load line slope being the
negative reciprocal of the ac load resistance.

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 Advantages
The advantages of transformer coupled class A power
amplifier are as follows.
• No loss of signal power in the base or collector resistors.
• Excellent impedance matching is achieved.
• Gain is high.
• DC isolation is provided.

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 Disadvantages
The disadvantages of transformer coupled class A power
amplifier are as follows:

• Low frequency signals are less amplified comparatively.

• Hum noise is introduced by transformers.
• Transformers are bulky and costly.

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 Applications
The applications of transformer coupled class A power
amplifier are as follows.
• This circuit is where impedance matching is the main
criterion.
• These are used as driver amplifiers and sometimes as
output amplifiers.

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