EE 420L Engineering Electronics II - Final Project

 

Authored by David Flores

Email: flored6@unlv.nevada.edu

Due: May 8, 2019

 

Lab Description

For our Final Project we are to design a voltage amplifier with a gain of 10, using certain MOSFETs. For our design we went with the Push-Pull Amplifier. This amplifier is to comply with certain specifications which include: driving a 1kΩ resistor, input resistance greater than 50k, as fast as possible design, as large output swing as possible, and cannot draw more than 1 mA from a 9V supply voltage under quiescent conditions.

 

Lab Instructions

Project – design a voltage amplifier with a gain of 10 using either the ZVN3306A or ZVP3306A (or both) MOSFETs and as many resistors and capacitors as you need. You should try to get as fast a design as possible driving a 1k load, with an input resistance greater than 50k, with as large of output swing as possible. AC coupling input and output is okay as long as your design can pass a 100 Hz input signal. Your report, in html, should detail your design considerations, and measured results showing the amplifier's performance. Your design can draw no more, under quiescent conditions (no input signal), than 1 mA from a +9 V supply voltage. Your report is due at the beginning of lab on Wednesday, May 8. Access to your CMOSedu.com lab accounts will be removed at this time. 

 

 

Final Project:

We start off by picking a certain amplifier that we could use to meet all the specifications. For that we went and reviewed past labs where we worked on certain amplifiers. Specifically in lab 6 we saw that we had used the push-pull amplifier we went with this design because it can be used as a transimpedance amplifier because it has a high gain and can drive a load.

 

One of the important parameters of this Project is that the design must draw less than 1mA from a 9V VDD power supply. The input resistance must be greater than 50k.

 

These parameters need to be met so we set our current at 0.8mA not too low in case we need more current but not 0.9mA so that is won't accidently go to high.

As for the input resistance the push-pull amplifier usually has a large input resistance at about 100k or more. This is so that no AC current goes back through Vin. When we model the current for our hand calculations we can assume there is zero AC current across that 100k+ resistor.

 

Hand Calculations:

AC Analysis                                                           Solving For Gain

               

 

DC Analysis to solve for our Resistors

For the hand calculations I got a gain of 17 compared to the gain of 10 on the Ltspice simulation. This happens because the circuit we made is a bit unstable and can have issues.

 

NOTE** I tried solving for a bigger gain for my hand calculations say a gain of 12 so that I would get a gain of 10 on the breadboard. This was not the correct approach because not only was the design very unstable but if we messed with the resistor sizes we would jump pass our current limitations. So for future reference I would say to add another stage. Using this Push-Pull could still work but adding another stage with additional push pull or source followers could really help me all of the specifications.

 

LTspice Simulations:

 

Ltspice Schematic for our Push Pull        

       

 

 

Transient analysis to show gain of 10                        AC analysis to show gain at different frequencies

     

 

The results here show that at a frequency of 100Hz we get a gain of 20dB or 10 which is what we want but it is really unstable a small offsets in resistor values or frequency can cause a big change in our gain. So if we needed  to improve that specifically we would make it so that it is flat from the DC gain up until the drop off closer to our unity gain frequency. Some ideas that could help this specifically is probably adding a source follower so that the gain is not all in one jump. This way we wouldn't have to worry so much about our resistor values and being so precise.

 

Lab Results:

 

Oscilloscope Results                                     

     

 

A gain of about 8.2 was as good as I could get it with the parameters we needed to meet and this specific topology. If I lowered the resistor values anymore so that we could get a better gain the current would go past the limitations set. As we can see from the Multimeter are results are at their max for this specific topology.

 

 

Return to Index

Return to EE 420L Students

Return to EE 420L Homepage