Effective teaching of feedback analysis

Feedback analysis is a valuable tool for analyzing multistage feedback amplifiers. Students, however, often find this topic confusing and difficult to learn. Reasons for this difficulty and confusion include applying feedback analysis to inappropriate circuits and failure to explicitly state and check the basic assumptions of feedback analysis. Another source of confusion is failure to keep the source and the load separate from the basic amplifier making the feedback model less physical. In this paper, these pitfalls are discussed and a straightforward methodology for analyzing feedback amplifiers is presented. Several examples of feedback analysis are presented.