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Two stage amplifier in an electronic circuit

The cascode is a two stage amplifier that consists of a common emitter stage feeding into a common base stage when using bipolar junction transistors (BJTs) or alternatively a common source stage feeding a common gate stage when using field effect transistors (FETs). Because there is no direct coupling from the output to input, the Miller effect is eliminated, contributing to a much higher bandwidth. Compared to a single amplifier stage, this combination may have one or more of the following characteristics: higher input–output isolation, higher input impedance, high output impedance, higher bandwidth.

The use of a cascode (sometimes verbified to cascoding) is a common technique for improving analog circuit performance, applicable to both vacuum tubes and transistors. The name "cascode" was coined in an article written by Frederick Vinton Hunt and Roger Wayne Hickman in 1939, in a discussion on the application of voltage stabilizers. They proposed a cascade of two triodes (the first one with a common cathode setup, the second one with a common grid) as a replacement for a pentode, and so the name may be assumed to be an abbreviation of "casc(aded triode amplifier having characteristics similar to, but less noisy than, a single pent)ode". Cascode circuits were employed in early television sets for the 'front end' or tuner because of their low noise and wider bandwidth. Bipolar Junction Transistors have collector base parasitic capacitance in the low picofarad to fractional picofarad range. The Miller Effect means that when this capacitance is in the feedback path, it results in an effective input capacitance that is multiplied by the stage gain: a feedback capacitance of only 1.0 pF in a circuit with a voltage gain of 50 results in an effective input capacitance of 50 pF. While this can be overcome in radio frequency circuits/tuned circuits by "neutralising" feedback in opposition, it is more difficult to combat in wideband circuits such as video amplifiers, whose bandwidths range from analog television (some 5 MHz for PAL), to at least 86 MHz in the older VGA format (UXGA, 1600 x 1200, 60 Hz refresh). Video amplifiers cannot operate to such high frequencies with any appreciable collector base feedback, so the cascode, with its very low effective feedback capacitance, is the design of choice for video amplifiers in CRT based monitors.

Figure 1 shows an example of a cascode amplifier with a common source amplifier as the input stage driven by a signal source, Vin. This input stage drives a common gate amplifier as the output stage, with output signal Vout. As the lower FET conducts it changes the upper FET's source voltage, and the upper FET conducts due to the changed potential between its gate and source. The major advantage of this circuit arrangement stems from the placement of the upper field effect transistor (FET) as the load of the input (lower) FET's output terminal (drain). Because at operating frequencies the upper FET's gate is effectively grounded, the upper FET's source voltage (and therefore the input transistor's drain) is held at nearly constant voltage during operation. In other words, the upper FET exhibits a low input resistance to the lower FET, making the voltage gain of the lower FET very small, which dramatically reduces the Miller effect feedback capacitance from the lower FET's drain to gate. This loss of voltage gain is recovered by the upper FET. Thus, the upper transistor permits the lower FET to operate with minimal negative (Miller) feedback, improving its bandwidth. The upper FET gate is electrically grounded, so charge and discharge of the stray capacitance, Cdg, between drain and gate is simply through RD and the output load (say Rout), and the frequency response is affected only for frequencies above the associated RC time constant τ = Cdg RD//Rout, namely f = 1/(2πτ), a rather high frequency because Cdg is small. That is, the upper FET gate does not suffer from Miller amplification of Cdg. If the upper FET stage were operated alone using its source as input node (that is, common gate (CG) configuration), it would have a good voltage gain and wide bandwidth. However, its low input impedance would limit its usefulness to very low impedance voltage drivers. Adding the lower FET results in a high input impedance, allowing the cascode stage to be driven by a high impedance source. If one were to replace the upper FET with a typical inductive/resistive load and take the output from the input transistor's drain (that is, a common source (CS) configuration), the CS configuration would offer the same input impedance as the cascode, but the cascode configuration would offer a potentially greater gain and much greater bandwidth.

The cascode arrangement is also very stable. Its output is effectively isolated from the input both electrically and physically. The lower transistor has nearly constant voltage at both drain and source, and thus there is essentially "nothing" to feed back into its gate. The upper transistor has nearly constant voltage at its gate and source. Thus, the only nodes with significant voltage on them are the input and output, and these are separated by the central connection of nearly constant voltage and by the physical distance of two transistors. Thus in practice there is little feedback from the output to the input. Metal shielding is both effective and easy to provide between the two transistors for even greater isolation when required. This would be difficult in one transistor amplifier circuits, which at high frequencies would require neutralization.

As shown, the cascode circuit using two "stacked" FETs imposes some restrictions on the two FETs — namely, the upper FET must be biased so its source voltage is high enough (the lower FET drain voltage may swing too low, causing it to saturate). Ensurance of this condition for FETs requires careful selection for the pair or special biasing of the upper FET gate, increasing cost. The cascode circuit can also be built using bipolar transistors, or MOSFETs, or even one FET (or MOSFET) and one BJT. This circuit arrangement was very common in VHF television tuners when they employed vacuum tubes.

The cascode arrangement offers high gain, high bandwidth, high slew rate, high stability, and high input impedance. As a two transistor circuit, the parts count is very low.

The cascode circuit requires two transistors and requires a relatively high supply voltage. For the two FET cascode, both transistors must be biased with ample VDS in operation, imposing a lower limit on the supply voltage.

A dual gate MOSFET often functions as a "one transistor" cascode. Common in the front ends of sensitive VHF receivers, a dual gate MOSFET is operated as a common source amplifier with the primary gate (usually designated "gate 1" by MOSFET manufacturers) connected to the input and the second gate grounded (bypassed). Internally, there is one channel covered by the two adjacent gates; therefore, the resulting circuit is electrically a cascode composed of two FETs, the common lower drain to upper source connection merely being that portion of the single channel that lies physically adjacent to the border between the two gates.

A cascode circuit is very useful as a multiplying mixer circuit in superheterodyne receivers. At the lower gate the RF signal is fed to the mixer, and at the upper gate the local oscillator signal is fed to the mixer. Both signals are multiplied by the mixer, and the difference frequency, the intermediate frequency, is taken from the upper drain of the cascode mixer. This was further developed by cascoding whole differential amplifier stages to form the balanced mixer, and then the Gilbert cell double balanced mixer.

With the rise of integrated circuits, transistors have become cheap in terms of silicon die area. In MOSFET technology especially, cascoding can be used in current mirrors to increase the output impedance of the output current source. A modified version of the cascode can also be used as a modulator, particularly for amplitude modulation. The upper device supplies the audio signal, and the lower is the RF amplifier device. A cascode may also be combined with a voltage ladder to form a high voltage transistor. The input transistor may be of any low UCEO type, while the others, acting as stacked linear series voltage regulators, should be able to withstand a considerable fraction of the supply voltage. Note that for a large output voltage swing, their base voltages should not be bypassed to ground by capacitors, and the uppermost ladder resistor should be able to withstand the full supply voltage. This shows that a linear series voltage regulator is actually a current buffer with its input and output designations swapped.

The cascode configuration can be represented as a simple voltage amplifier (or more accurately, as a g parameter two port network) by using its input impedance, output impedance, and voltage gain. These parameters are related to the corresponding g parameters below. Other useful properties not considered here are circuit bandwidth and dynamic range.

At high frequencies, the parasitic capacitances of the transistors (gate to drain, gate to source, drain to body, and bipolar equivalents) must be included in the hybrid π models to obtain an accurate frequency response. The design goals also differ from the emphasis on overall high gain as described above for low frequency design. In high frequency circuits, impedance matching at the input and output of the amplifier is typically desired in order to eliminate signal reflections and maximize power gain. In the cascode, the isolation between the input and output ports is still characterized by a small reverse transmission term g12, making it easier to design matching networks because the amplifier is approximately unilateral.