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Hartley Oscillator

It is a type of oscillator used to produce waves in the range of radio frequency

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evelynwanjiku99
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58 views3 pages

Hartley Oscillator

It is a type of oscillator used to produce waves in the range of radio frequency

Uploaded by

evelynwanjiku99
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Hartley Oscillator

Hartley Oscillator is a type of Tuned Circuit Oscillators which are used to


produce the waves in the range of radio frequency and hence are also referred
to as RF Oscillators. Its frequency of oscillation is decided by its tank circuit
which has a capacitor connected in parallel with the two serially connected
inductors, as shown by Figure 1.

Here the RC is the collector resistor while the emitter resistor RE forms the
stabilizing network. Further the resistors R1 and R2 form the voltage divider
bias network for the transistor in common-emitter CE configuration. Next, the
capacitors Ci and Co are the input and output decoupling capacitors while the
emitter capacitor CE is the bypass capacitor used to bypass the amplified AC
signals. All these components are identical to those present in the case of a
common-emitter amplifier which is biased using a voltage divider network.
However, Figure 1 also shows one more set of components viz., the inductors
L1 and L2 and the capacitor C which form the tank circuit (shown in red
enclosure).
On switching ON the power supply, the transistor starts to conduct, leading
to an increase in the collector current, IC which charges the capacitor C. On
acquiring the maximum charge feasible, C starts to discharge via the
inductors L1 and L2. This charging and discharging cycles result in the damped
oscillations in the tank circuit. The oscillation current in the tank circuit
produces an AC voltage across the inductors L1 and L2 which are out of phase
by 180o as their point of contact is grounded.
Further from the figure, it is evident that the output of the amplifier is applied
across the inductor L1 while the feedback voltage drawn across L2 is applied to
the base of the transistor. Thus one can conclude that the output of the
amplifier is in-phase with the tank circuit’s voltage and supplies back the
energy lost by it while the energy fed back to amplifier circuit will be out-of-
phase by 180o. The feedback voltage which is already 180o out-of-phase with
the transistor is provided by an additional 180o phase-shift due to the
transistor action. Hence the signal which appears at the transistor’s output
will be amplified and will have a net phase-shift of 360o.
At this state, if one makes the gain of the circuit to be slightly greater than the
feedback ratio given by

β=L2/ L1 (if the coils are wound on different core)

β=(L2+ M )/(L1 + M )

(if the coils are wound on the same core with M indicating the mutual
inductance)
Also since A β ≥ 1 so A ≥ L1/ L2

Then the circuit generates the oscillations which can be sustained by


maintaining the gain of the circuit to be equal to that of the feedback ratio.
This causes the circuit in Figure 1 to act as an oscillator as it would then satisfy
both the conditions of the Barkhausen criteria.
The frequency of such an oscillator is given as
Where;

Hartley Oscillators are advantageous as they are easy-tunable circuits with a


very few components including a capacitor and either two inductors or a
tapped coil. This result in a constant amplitude output throughout its wide
operational frequency range which typically ranges from 20 KHz to 30 MHz
However, this kind of oscillator is not suitable for low frequency as it would
result in a large-sized inductor which makes the circuit bulky. Further, the
output of Hartley Oscillator has high content of harmonics in it and hence
does not suit for the applications which require pure sine wave.

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