Electrical – the base current of a class ab amplifier with darlington pair configuration

amplifiertransistors

I am trying to design a 3 stage amplifier using transistors, 2 pre-amp stages using class A configuration and an output stage class AB. I have built the class ab amplifier with a darlington configuration and 4 diodes for the bias voltage and it has a gain of about 0.8v but now I am trying to calculate the input impeadance of the ac model so that I can design the 2nd stage but I am having some issues with finding the input impedance since I do not know how to calculate the transconductance with a darlington configuration.

Can you guys give me some hints on what to do ?
Thanks

schematic

simulate this circuit – Schematic created using CircuitLab

Best Answer

On a single bipolar, wiggling the base by 18milliVolts will cause a 2:1 variation in the emitter (and collector) current. The GM (transconductance) is Iemitter(amps)/0.026volts. At 26milliAmps, the GM is ONE (amp/volts).

For a Darlington, the GM will be affected by resistance shunting the base-emitter of the high-current device. And the frequency (as transient charging current plays a role).

Try a 1Kohm resistor paralleling the EB junction of Q4(high current device), and the same for the PNP device. For more power, consider 100 ohms, or whatever keeps the low-current device in "relative constant current" operation.

At "relative constant current", the low-current devices have no effect on the GM. IMHO