Amplifiers & Gain Stages#

Turning small signals into usable ones. Amplification is the core analog function β€” taking a weak signal and making it strong enough to drive a load, feed an ADC, or travel down a cable. The challenge is doing this without adding too much noise, distortion, or instability.

This section progresses from single-transistor stages through op-amp circuits to multistage designs, building intuition about gain, impedance, and the tradeoffs that every amplifier design confronts.

What This Section Covers#

  • Single-Transistor Amplifiers β€” Common emitter/source intuition, input/output impedance, and gain limits.
  • Op-Amps β€” Ideal assumptions and why they fail, inverting/non-inverting/buffer topologies, and real-world limitations.
  • Multistage Amplifiers β€” Cascading gain, interstage coupling, stability, and loading effects.
Backward Integrated Analog Devices Single-Transistor Amplifiers Forward