QUIESCENT in transistor

Ron H

Joined Apr 14, 2005
7,063
Quiescent means "at rest". In a transistor circuit, the quiescent state is defined by the voltages and currents present in the circuit when the power supply is on and stable, and no signal is applied.
 

Thread Starter

guru200773

Joined Apr 26, 2010
101
oh ok ok friend but how it related in Classes of amplifiers? Is there any relation between this quiescent state and load line?
 

Audioguru

Joined Dec 20, 2007
11,248
A class-A single transistor conducts a high current all the time. The current is modulated with the signal.
A class-B cxircuit has two usually complementary transistors (one is NPN and the other is PNP). They do not have an input bias voltage so they are completely cutoff at rest. They have crossover distortion.
A class-AB circuit usually has a complementary pair of transistors that are biased with a low quiescent currenty so they are always turned on a little with very low crossover distortion.

You can look in a text book or in Google to see a class-C and a class-D amplifier description.
 

logicman112

Joined Dec 27, 2008
69
Load line is the relationship of output voltage and current. If you consider a transistor as a two-ports network, it has input and output ports. Sometimes the relationship of output votage, means, vCE and output current means, ic, is like a line and it happens when transistor is used with resistive components not components with reactance like capacitors or inductors(Sometime those exist but they behave like short/open circuits and it is OK then).

Load line has DC and AC mathematical components and it is drawn with characteristic output diagram of transistor and true voltage and current of the transistor is on the characteristic curve and load line at the same time.
 

logicman112

Joined Dec 27, 2008
69
you are welcome. I will try to clarify the subject more, please ask more questions and I will try to answer. I lack time unfortunately but I wish i could review the questions. The worse is that this site does not let you review your previous posts, makes it very difficult to follow up our previous notes....

quiescent means static values. Transistor is drived by some DC voltage or current sources and some resistors. It makes you have some fixed DC voltages-currents for transistor and makes the transistor work in a specific region. Transistor has 3 basic regions to choose to work.

For small signal amplifying applications we drive it to Forward-Active-Region normally. In this region the signal AC voltage/current relations in Kierkoff's equations are linear which will lead to linear amplification.
 
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