The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Sep. 02, 2003
Filed:
Nov. 08, 2001
Donald St. John Beeman, Penn Valley, CA (US);
Jeffrey P. Kotowski, Nevada City, CA (US);
National Semiconductor Corporation, Santa Clara, CA (US);
Abstract
A method and apparatus are directed to emulating an emitter follower with a small PNP transistor that is arranged in a PNP multiplier configuration. The PNP multiplier includes a PNP emitter follower and a current mirror. The PNP follower is coupled between the input and the output. A current mirror is coupled to the collector of the PNP follower such that mirror produces a current that is a scaled version of the collector current from the PNP follower. The current mirror is arranged to scale the PNP collector current by a factor of N. The effective output current from the PNP multiplier circuit corresponds to &bgr;·I ·(N+1), where &bgr; corresponds to the large signal forward gain of the PNP follower. By multiplying the output current by a scaling factor, the effective forward gain of the PNP transistor is increased while utilizing a small geometry PNP device.