556 BJT AND JFET

The result is that

the effect of the capacitive elements in an amplifier are ignored for the mid-frequency
range when important quantities such as the gain and impedance levels are determined.

FREQUENCY RESPONSE

Typical Frequency Response

The magnitudes of the gain response curves of an RC-coupled, direct-coupled, and transformercoupled amplifier system are provided in Fig. 9.8. Note that the horizontal scale is a logarithmic scale to permit a plot extending from the low- to the high-frequency regions. For
each plot, a low-, a high-, and a mid-frequency region has been defined. In addition, the
primary reasons for the drop in gain at low and high frequencies have also been indicated
within the parentheses. For the RC-coupled amplifier, the drop at low frequencies is due to
the increasing reactance of CC, Cs, or CE, whereas its upper frequency limit is determined
by either the parasitic capacitive elements of the network or the frequency dependence of
the gain of the active device. An explanation of the drop in gain for the transformer-coupled system requires a basic understanding of transformer action and the transformer
equivalent circuit. For the moment, let us say that it is simply due to the shorting effect
(across the input terminals of the transformer) of the magnetizing inductive reactance at
low frequencies (XL = 2pfL). The gain must obviously be zero at f  0 because at this
point there is no longer a changing flux established through the core to induce a secondary
or output voltage. As indicated in Fig. 9.8, the high-frequency response is controlled primarily by the stray capacitance between the turns of the primary and secondary windings.
For the direct-coupled amplifier, there are no coupling or bypass capacitors to cause a drop
in gain at low frequencies. As the figure indicates, it is a flat response to the upper cutoff
|V |
| Av | = | o |
| Vi |
(Parasitic capacitances
of network and active
devices and frequency
dependence of the gain of
the transistor, FET, or tube)

Bandwidth
,

(CC Cs or CE)
Avmid
0.707Avmid
Mid-frequency
Lowfrequency

High-frequency

10

fL 100

1000

10,000

100,000

fH

1 MHz

10 MHz f (log scale)

(a)

|V |
| Av | = | o |
| Vi |

Bandwidth

Avmid
0.707Avmid

(Transformer)
(Transformer)
Mid-frequency

Lowfrequency
10

High-frequency
fL

100

1000

10,000

100,000

f (log scale)

(b)

|V |
| Av | = | o |
| Vi |

(Parasitic capacitances
of network and active
devices and frequency
dependence of the gain of
the transistor, FET, or tube)

Bandwidth
Avmid
0.707Avmid

10 ( fL )

fH

100

1000

10,000

fH 100,000

1 MHz

f (log scale)

(c)

FIG. 9.8
Gain versus frequency: (a) RC-coupled amplifiers; (b) transformer-coupled amplifiers; (c) direct-coupled amplifiers.