When it comes to RF engineering, some building blocks are absolutely essential. In the latest Trace Talks, Neil Jarvis highlighted one of the most important: amplifiers.
What makes them cornerstone components?
- They take a small signal and make it bigger, whether at the front end of a smartphone or the back end of a base station.
- But nothing’s perfect: engineers have to work around limitations like intermodulation distortion, compression, and noise figure.
- Different applications care about different trade-offs. For example, a power amplifier prioritizes output power, while a low-noise amplifier focuses on reducing noise.
Watch the full Trace Talks episode here.