Multistage amplifier

Simplified diagram of a 2-stage cascaded amplifier

A multistage amplifier is an electronic amplifier consisting of two or more single-stage amplifiers connected together. In this context, a single stage is an amplifier containing only a single transistor (sometimes a pair of transistors) or other active device. The most common reason for using multiple stages is to increase the gain of the amplifier in applications where the input signal is very small, for instance in radio receivers. In these applications a single stage has insufficient gain by itself. In some designs it is possible to obtain more desirable values of other parameters such as input resistance and output resistance.