Amplifier Circuit Design
Amplifiers are used in many different electronic and electrical applications.
They are an integral part of the design of many useful devices, especially hearing aids. They’re responsible for making the voices sound louder for someone who cannot hear properly.
They were used in radios and stereo equipment that you need for your speakers that you play your favorite music from. If you have ever played the electric guitar, you’ll know these devices well enough as what drives the sound of your guitar.
But what are Amplifiers? Let’s find out.
What are Amplifiers?
Amplifiers, (amp for short) are the electronic or electromagnetic components that electric current is magnified with inside a circuit. In a hearing aid for example, the microphone embedded in the circuit picks up the vibrations from the sounds nearby and then converts it into an electrical signal (current) which varies in intensity (strength).
The input from this microphone is taken and a transistor based amplifier boosts the signal so you can hear properly through the tiny loudspeaker inside your ear canal, which is the output of this circuit.
The amplification power of the amplifier can also be calculated easily as the ratio between the output and the input. This is called amplifier gain or gain factor. When an amplifier increases the amplitude of the original signal twice its original size, that amplifier is said to have a gain of 2. Audio amplifiers have a gain that is measured in decibels.
How it Works and Some Applications
An amplifier, as we know now, takes a small current and makes it into a larger one. This is done through different methods and largely depends on your specific requirements.
If there is a constant voltage that you need to have boosted in your circuit, an electromagnetic device called a transformer can be used. This can be thought of as a type of amplifier. Many people don’t realize it, but there are many transformers around us in our homes, and not just on the electricity poles outside.
The usage of these types of transformers is basically to power appliances that consume a very low voltage. This includes the laptop you are reading this blog on ot the MP3 player that you used to listen to music back in the day.
Electricity substations also use these transformers to “step down” the high voltage electricity being produced in power plants to the 240V that we normally use in daily life in homes and offices.
The transformers can be used for the opposite as well when the electricity needs to be “stepped up” to a higher voltage. That’s basically similar to what an amplifier does.
In circuits design, electromagnetic relays can act as amplifiers when a small pulse of electricity needs to switch another component on or off. A relay makes use of electromagnets to bring two circuits together so that when current flows through one of the circuits, the other circuit gets a much larger current flowing through it.
Relays can therefore be used in applications that need a significantly larger current to be powered. Security alarms are a great example of such an application that uses amplifiers.
If you want a circuit design that uses amplifiers, contact us today.