Common Base - Applications

Applications

This arrangement is not very common in low-frequency circuits, where it is usually employed for amplifiers that require an unusually low input impedance, for example to act as a preamplifier for moving-coil microphones. However, it is popular in high-frequency amplifiers, for example for VHF and UHF, because its input capacitance does not suffer from the Miller effect, which degrades the bandwidth of the common-emitter configuration, and because of the relatively high isolation between the input and output. This high isolation means that there is little feedback from the output back to the input, leading to high stability.

This configuration is also useful as a current buffer since it has a current gain of approximately unity (see formulas below). Often a common base is used in this manner, preceded by a common-emitter stage. The combination of these two form the cascode configuration, which possesses several of the benefits of each configuration, such as high input impedance and isolation.

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