Teaching Microwave Amplifier Design at the Undergraduate Level

Many textbooks on the subject of microwave amplifier design contain redundant material that may overload and confuse a student confronting microwave amplifiers for the first time. Some topics such as unilateral gain and unilateral design are often not necessary in this day of personal computing where exact gain and gain circle calculations can easily be used. Stability circles can be used to both identify allowable values of source and load reflection coefficients for the transistor and ascertain whether or not the transistor is unconditionally stable. By eliminating redundant topics and emphasizing the dual role of stability circles, instructors are able to effectively teach undergraduate students in a relatively short time design methods for narrow-band low-noise amplifiers, both single-stage and multistage, which employ either conditionally or unconditionally stable transistors.