CONTENTS

 INTRODUCTION
 ELECTRONIC OSCILLATOR
 HARMONIC OSCILLATOR
 FEEDBACK OSCILLATOR
 NEGATIVE RESISTANCE OSCILLATOR
 LIST OF HARMONIC CIRCUIT
 RELAXATION OSCILLATOR
 THEORY OF FEEDBACK OSCILLATOR
 HISTORY
 REFERENCE
INTRODUCTION
Electronic oscillator
An electronic oscillator is an electronic circuit that produces
a periodic, oscillating or alternating current (AC) signal,
usually a sine wave, square wave or a triangle wave, powered
by a direct current (DC) source. Oscillators are found in
many electronic devices, such as radio receivers, television
sets, radio and television broadcast transmitters, computers,
computer peripherals, cell phones, radar, and many other

devices.
 A low-frequency oscillator (LFO) is an oscillator that generates a
frequency below approximately 20 Hz. This term is typically used in
the field of audio synthesizers, to distinguish it from an audio
frequency oscillator.
An audio oscillator produces frequencies in the audio range, 20 Hz
to 20 kHz.
 A radio frequency (RF) oscillator produces signals above the
audio range, more generally in the range of 100 kHz to 100 GHz.

There are two general types of electronic oscillators: the linear

or harmonic oscillator, and the nonlinear or relaxation
oscillator.
The two types are fundamentally different in how oscillation is
produced, as well as in the characteristic type of output signal
that is generated.
The most-common linear oscillator in use is the crystal oscillator,
in which the output frequency is controlled by a piezo-electric
resonator consisting of a vibrating quartz crystal. Crystal
oscillators are ubiquitous in modern electronics, being the source
for the clock signal in computers and digital watches, as well as a
source for the signals generated in radio transmitters and
receivers. As a crystal oscillator’s “native” output waveform is
sinusoidal, a signal-conditioning circuit may be used to convert
the output to other waveform types, such as the square wave
typically utilized in computer clock circuits.
Harmonic oscillators

output Vo fed back into its input vf through a filter, β(jω).

Linear or harmonic oscillators generate a sinusoidal (or

nearly- sinusoidal) signal. There are two types:
Feedback oscillator
The most common form of linear oscillator is an electronic
amplifier such as a transistor or operational amplifier connected
in a feedback loop with its output fed back into its input through
a frequency selective electronic filter to provide positive
feedback.
When the power supply to the amplifier is switched on initially,
electronic noise in the circuit provides a non-zero signal to get
oscillations started. The noise travels around the loop and is
amplified and filtered until very quickly it converges on a sine
wave at a single frequency.
Feedback oscillator circuits can be classified according to the type
of frequency selective filter they use in the feedback loop:
In an RC oscillator circuit, the filter is a network of resistors and
capacitors. RC oscillators are mostly used to generate lower
frequencies, for example in the audio range. Common types of
RC oscillator circuits are the phase shift oscillator and the Wien
bridge oscillator. LR oscillators, using inductor and resistor filters
also exist, however they are much less common due to the
required size of an inductor to achieve a value appropriate for use
at lower frequencies.
 In an LC oscillator circuit, the filter is a tuned circuit (often
called a tank circuit) consisting of an inductor (L) and capacitor
(C) connected together, which acts as a resonator. Charge flows
back and forth between the capacitor's plates through the
inductor, so the tuned circuit can store electrical energy
oscillating at its resonant frequency. The amplifier adds power to
compensate for resistive energy losses in the circuit and supplies
the power for the output signal. LC oscillators are often used at
radio frequencies, when a tenable frequency source is
necessary, such as in signal generators, tenable radio
transmitters and the local oscillators in radio receivers. Typical
LC oscillator circuits are the Hartley, Colpittsand Clapp circuits.
In a crystal oscillator circuit the filter is a piezoelectric crystal
(commonly a quartz crystal). The crystal mechanically vibrates
as a resonator, and its frequency of vibration determines the
oscillation frequency.
Crystals have a very high Ǫ-factor and also better temperature
stability than tuned circuits, so crystal oscillators have much
better frequency stability than LC or RC oscillators. Crystal
oscillators are the most common type of linear oscillator, used to
stabilize the frequency of most radio transmitters, and to
generate the clock signal in computers and quartz clocks. Crystal
oscillators often use the same circuits as LC oscillators, with the
crystal replacing the tuned circuit the Pierce oscillator circuit is
also commonly used.
Ǫuartz crystals are generally limited to frequencies of 30 MHz or
below. Other types of resonators, dielectric resonators and
surface acoustic wave (SAW) devices, are used to control higher
frequency oscillators, up into the microwave range. For example,
SAW oscillators are used to generate the radio signal in cell
phones.
Negative-resistance oscillator

In addition to the feedback oscillators described above, which

use two-port amplifying active elements such as transistors and
operational amplifiers, linear oscillators can also be built using
one-port (two terminal) devices with negative resistance, such as
magnetron tubes, tunnel diodes, IMPATT diodes and Gunn diodes.
Negative-resistance oscillators are usually used at high
frequencies in the microwave range and above, since at these
frequencies feedback oscillators perform poorly due to
excessive phase shift in the feedback path.
In negative-resistance oscillators, a resonant circuit, such as an
LC circuit, crystal, or cavity resonator, is connected across a
device with negative differential resistance, and a DC bias voltage
is applied to supply energy. A resonant circuit by itself is "almost"
an oscillator; it can store energy in the form of electronic
oscillations if excited, but because it has electrical resistance and
other losses the oscillations are damped and decay to zero. The
negative resistance of the active device cancels the (positive)
internal loss resistance in the resonator, in effect creating a
resonator with no damping, which generates spontaneous
continuous oscillations at its resonant frequency.
The negative-resistance oscillator model is not limited to one-
port devices like diodes; feedback oscillator circuits with two-
port amplifying devices such as transistors and tubes also have
negative resistance. At high frequencies, three terminal devices
such as transistors and FETs are also used in negative resistance
oscillators. At high frequencies these devices do not need a
feedback loop, but with certain loads applied to one port can
become unstable at the other port and show negative resistance
due to internal feedback. The negative resistance port is
connected to a tuned circuit or resonant cavity, causing them to
oscillate.
High-frequency oscillators in general are designed using negative-
resistance techniques.
List of harmonic oscillator circuits
Some of the many harmonic oscillator circuits are listed below:
Active devices used in oscillators and approximate maximum
frequencies

Device
Triode vacuum tube ~1 GHz
Bipolar transistor (BJT) ~20 GHz
Heterojunction bipolar transistor (HBT) ~50 GHz
Metal–semiconductor field-effect transistor
~100 GHz
(MESFET)
Gunn diode, fundamental mode ~100 GHz
Magnetron tube ~100 GHz
High electron mobility transistor (HEMT) ~200 GHz
Klystron tube ~200 GHz
Gunn diode, harmonic mode ~200 GHz
IMPATT diode ~300 GHz
Gyrotron tube ~600 GHz
Armstrong oscillator, a.k.a. Meissner oscillator
Clapp oscillator
Colpitts oscillator
Cross-coupled oscillator
Dynatron oscillator
Hartley oscillator
Opto-electronic oscillator
Pierce oscillator
Phase-shift oscillator
Robinson oscillator
Tri-tet oscillator
Vackář oscillator
Wien bridge oscillator
Relaxation oscillator

A nonlinear or relaxation oscillator produces a non-sinusoidal

output, such as a square, sawtooth or triangle wave.[4] It consists of
an energy-storing element (a capacitor or, more rarely, an inductor)
and a nonlinear switching device (a latch, Schmitt trigger, or
negative-resistance element) connected in a feedback loop. The
switching device periodically charges and discharges the energy
stored in the storage element thus causing abrupt changes in
the output waveform.
Square-wave relaxation oscillators are used to provide the clock
signal for sequential logic circuits such as timers and counters,
although crystal oscillators are often preferred for their greater
stability. Triangle-wave or sawtooth oscillators are used in the
timebase circuits that generate the horizontal deflection signals
for cathode ray tubes in analogue oscilloscopes and television
sets.
They are also used in voltage-controlled oscillators (VCOs),
inverters and switching power supplies, dual-slope analog to
digital converters (ADCs), and in function generators to generate
square and triangle waves for testing equipment. In general,
relaxation oscillators are used at lower frequencies and have
poorer frequency stability than linear oscillators.
Ring oscillators are built of a ring of active delay stages.
Generally the ring has an odd number of inverting stages, so that
there is no single stable state for the internal ring voltages.
Instead, a single transition propagates endlessly around the ring.
Some of the more common relaxation oscillator circuits are listed
below:
Multivibrator
Pearson–Anson oscillator
Ring oscillator
Delay-line oscillator
Royer oscillator
Voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO)
An oscillator can be designed so that the oscillation frequency
can be varied over some range by an input voltage or current. These
voltage controlled oscillators are widely used in phase-locked
loops, in which the oscillator's frequency can be locked to the
frequency of another oscillator. These are ubiquitous in modern
communications circuits, used in filters, modulators,
demodulators, and forming the basis of frequency synthesizer
circuits which are used to tune radios and televisions.
Radio frequency VCOs are usually made by adding a varactor
diode to the tuned circuit or resonator in an oscillator circuit.
Changing the DC voltage across the varactor changes its
capacitance, which changes the resonant frequency of the tuned
circuit. Voltage controlled relaxation oscillators can be
constructed by charging and discharging the energy storage
capacitor with a voltage controlled current source. Increasing the
input voltage increases the rate of charging the capacitor,
decreasing the time between switching events.
Theory of feedback oscillators

A feedback oscillator circuit consists of two parts connected in a

feedback loop; an amplifier and anelectronic filter . The filter's
purpose is to limit the frequencies that can pass through the
loop so the circuit only oscillates at the desired frequency.[11]
Since the filter and wires in the circuit have resistance they
consume energy and the amplitude of the signal drops as it
passes through the filter. The amplifier is needed to increase the
amplitude of the signal to compensate for the energy lost in the
other parts of the circuit, so the loop will oscillate, as well as
supply energy to the load attached to the output.
Frequency of oscillation - the
Barkhausen criterion

To determine the frequency(s) at which a feedback oscillator circuit will oscillate, the
feedback loop is thought of as broken at some point (see diagrams) to give an input and output port.
A sine wave is applied to the input

and

the amplitude and phase of for oscillation is that the loop gain must be one
Since is a complex number with two parts,
a magnitude and an angle, the above equation
actually consists of two conditions:
The magnitude of the gain
(amplification) around the loop at ω0 must be unity

so that after a trip around the loop the sine wave is the same
amplitude. It can be seen intuitively that if the loop gain were
greater than one, the amplitude of the sinusoidal signal would
increase as it travels around the loop, resulting in a sine wave
that grows exponentially with time, without bound.[11] If the loop
gain were less than one, the signal would decrease around the
loop, resulting in an exponentially decaying sine wave that
decreases to zero.
The sine wave at the end of the loop must be in phase with the
wave at the beginning of the loop.[13] Since the sine wave is periodic
and repeats every 2π radians, this means that the phase shift
around the loop at the oscillation frequency ω0 must be zero or a
multiple of 2π radians (360°)

Equations (1) and (2) are called the Barkhausen stability criterion. It is
a necessary but not a sufficient criterion for oscillation, so there are
some circuits which satisfy these equations that will not oscillate. An
equivalent condition often used instead of the Barkhausen condition
is
that the circuit's closed loop transfer function (the circuit's
complex impedance at its output) have a pair of poles on the
imaginary axis.
In general, the phase shift of the feedback network increases with
increasing frequency so there are only a few discrete frequencies
(often only one) which satisfy the second equation. If the amplifier
gain is high enough that the loop gain is unity (or greater, see
Startup section) at one of these frequencies, the circuit will oscillate at
that frequency. Many amplifiers such as common-emitter transistor
circuits are "inverting", meaning that their output voltage decreases
when their input increases. In these the amplifier provides 180° phase
shift, so the circuit will oscillate at the frequency at which the
feedback network provides the other 180° phase shift.
At frequencies well below the poles of the amplifying device,
the amplifier will act as a pure gain
, but if the oscillation frequency is near the amplifier's
cutoff frequency , within , the active
device can no longer be considered a 'pure gain', and it will
contribute some phase shift
to the loop.
An alternate mathematical stability test sometimes used instead of
the Barkhausen criterion is the Nyquist stability criterion.[14]: p.6–7 This
has a wider applicability than the Barkhausen, so it can identify some
of the circuits which pass the Barkhausen criterion but do not
oscillate.
Frequency stability
Temperature changes, aging, and manufacturing tolerances will
cause component values to "drift" away from their designed
values.[19][20] Changes in frequency determining components such
as the tank circuit in LC oscillators will cause the oscillation
frequency to change, so for a constant frequency these
components must have stable values. How stable the oscillator's
frequency is to other changes in the circuit, such as changes in
values of other components, gain of the amplifier, the load
impedance, or the supply voltage, is mainly dependent on the Ǫ
factor ("quality factor") of the feedback filter. Since the amplitude
of the output is constant due to the nonlinearity of the amplifier
(see Startup section below), changes in component values
cause changes in the phase shift of the feedback loop. Since
oscillation can only occur at frequencies where the phase shift is
a multiple of 360°, , shifts in component values cause the
oscillation frequency to change to bring the loop phase back to
360n°. The amount of frequency change caused by a given phase
change depends on the slope of the loop
phase curve at , which is determined by the [19][20][21][22]
RC oscillators have the equivalent of a very low , so the phase
changes very slowly with frequency, therefore a given phase
change will cause a large change in the frequency. In contrast,
LC oscillators have tank circuits with high (~102). This means
the phase shift of the feedback network increases rapidly with
frequency near the resonant frequency of the tank circuit. So a
large change in phase causes only a small change in
frequency.
Therefore the circuit's oscillation frequency is very close to the
natural resonant frequency of the tuned circuit, and doesn't
depend much on other components in the circuit. The quartz
crystal resonators used in crystal oscillators have even higher
(104 to 106) and their frequency is very stable and independent of
other circuit components.
Tunability
The frequency of RC and LC oscillators can be tuned over a wide range
by using variable components in the filter. A microwave cavity can be
tuned mechanically by moving one of the walls. In contrast, a quartz
crystal is a mechanical resonator whose resonant frequency is mainly
determined by its dimensions, so a crystal oscillator's frequency is
only adjustable over a very
narrow range, a tiny fraction of one percent. It's frequency can be
changed slightly by using a trimmer capacitor in series or parallel
with the crystal.
Startup and amplitude of oscillation
The Barkhausen criterion above, eqs. (1) and (2), merely gives
the frequencies at which steady state oscillation is possible,
but says nothing about the amplitude of the oscillation,
whether the amplitude is stable, or whether the circuit will
start oscillating when the power is turned
on. For a practical oscillator two additional requirements
are necessary:
In order for oscillations to start up in the circuit from zero,
the circuit must have "excess gain"; the loop gain for small
signals must be greater than one at its oscillation frequency.

For stable operation, the feedback loop must include a

nonlinear component which reduces the gain back to unity as
the amplitude increases to its operating value.
A typical rule of thumb is to make the small signal loop gain at
the oscillation frequency 2 or
3. When the power is turned on, oscillation is started by the
power turn-on transient or random electronic noise present in
the circuit. Noise guarantees that the circuit will not remain
"balanced" precisely at its unstable DC equilibrium point (Ǫ
point) indefinitely. Due to the narrow passband of the filter, the
response of the circuit to a noise pulse will be sinusoidal, it will
excite a small sine wave of voltage in the loop. Since for small
signals the loop gain is greater than one, the amplitude of the
sine wave increases exponentially.
During startup, while the amplitude of the oscillation is small,
the circuit is approximately linear, so the analysis used in the
Barkhausen criterion is applicable. When the amplitude becomes
large enough that the amplifier becomes nonlinear, technically
the frequency domain analysis used in normal amplifier circuits
is no longer applicable, so the "gain" of the circuit is undefined.
However the filter attenuates the harmonic components
produced by the nonlinearity of the amplifier, so the
fundamental frequency component mainly determines the loop
gain (this is the "harmonic balance" analysis technique for
nonlinear circuits).
The sine wave cannot grow indefinitely; in all real oscillators
some nonlinear process in the circuit limits its amplitude,
reducing the gain as the amplitude increases, resulting in stable
operation at some constant amplitude. In most oscillators this
nonlinearity is simply the saturation (limiting) of the amplifying
device, the transistor, vacuum tube or op-amp. The maximum
voltage swing of the amplifier's output is limited by the DC
voltage provided by its power supply. Another possibility is that
the output may be limited by the amplifier slew rate.
As the amplitude of the output nears the power supply voltage
rails, the amplifier begins to saturate on the peaks (top and bottom)
of the sine wave, flattening or "clipping" the peaks.[18] Since the
output of the amplifier can no longer increase with increasing
input, further increases in amplitude cause the equivalent gain
of the amplifier and thus the loop gain to decrease.[30] The
amplitude of the sine wave, and the resulting clipping, continues to
grow until the loop gain is reduced to unity, , satisfying the
Barkhausen criterion, at which point the
amplitude levels off and steady state operation is achieved,[16]
with the output a slightly distorted sine wave with peak
amplitude determined by the supply voltage. This is a stable
equilibrium; if the amplitude of the sine wave increases for some
reason, increased clipping of the output causes the loop gain to
drop below one temporarily, reducing the sine wave's amplitude
back to its unity-gain value. Similarly if the amplitude of the wave
decreases, the decreased clipping will cause the loop gain to
increase above one, increasing the amplitude.
The amount of harmonic distortion in the output is dependent on
how much excess loop gain the
circuit has:
If the small signal loop gain is made close to one, just slightly
greater, the output waveform will have minimum distortion, and the
frequency will be most stable and independent of supply voltage
and load impedance. However, the oscillator may be slow
starting up, and a small decrease in gain due to a variation in
component values may prevent it from oscillating.
If the small signal loop gain is made significantly greater than one,
the oscillator starts up faster, but more severe clipping of the
sine wave occurs, and thus the resulting distortion of the output
waveform increases. The oscillation frequency becomes more
dependent on the supply voltage and current drawn by the load.
Design procedure
Since oscillators depend on nonlinearity for their operation, the
usual linear frequency domain circuit analysis techniques used
for amplifiers based on the Laplace transform, such as root
locus and gain and phase plots (Bode plots), cannot capture
their full behaviour. To determine startup and transient behaviour
and calculate the detailed shape of the output waveform,
electronic circuit simulation computer programs like SPICE are
used. A typical design procedure for oscillator circuits is to use
linear techniques such as the Barkhausen stability criterion or
Nyquist stability criterion to design the circuit, then simulate the
circuit on computer to make sure it starts up reliably and to
determine the nonlinear aspects of operation such as harmonic
distortion.
Component values are tweaked until the simulation results are
satisfactory. The distorted oscillations of real-world (nonlinear)
oscillators are called limit cycles and are studied in nonlinear
control theory.
Amplitude-stabilized oscillators
In applications where a 'pure' very low distortion sine wave is
needed, such as precision signal generators, a nonlinear
component is often used in the feedback loop that provides a
'slow' gain reduction with amplitude. This stabilizes the loop gain
at an amplitude below the saturation level of the amplifier, so it
does not saturate and "clip" the sine wave. Resistor-diode
networks and FETs are often used for the nonlinear element. An
older design uses a thermistor or an ordinary incandescent light
bulb; both provide a resistance that increases with temperature
as the current through them increases.
As the amplitude of the signal current through them increases
during oscillator startup, the increasing resistance of these
devices reduces the loop gain. The essential characteristic of all
these circuits is that the nonlinear gain-control circuit must have
a long time constant, much longer than a single period of the
oscillation. Therefore over a single cycle they act as virtually linear
elements, and so introduce very little distortion. The operation of
these circuits is somewhat analogous to an automatic gain
control (AGC) circuit in a radio receiver. The Wein bridge
oscillator is a widely used circuit in which this type of gain
stabilization is used.
Frequency limitations
At high frequencies it becomes difficult to physically implement
feedback oscillators because of shortcomings of the components.
Since at high frequencies the tank circuit has very small
capacitance and inductance, parasitic capacitance and parasitic
inductance of component leads and PCB traces become
significant. These may create unwanted feedback paths between
the output and input of the active device, creating instability and
oscillations at unwanted frequencies (parasitic oscillation).
Parasitic feedback paths inside the active device itself, such as
the interelectrode capacitance between output and input, make
the device unstable. The input impedance of the active device
falls with frequency, so it may load the feedback network. As a
result, stable feedback oscillators are difficult to build for
frequencies above 500 MHz, and negative resistance oscillators
are usually used for frequencies above this.
History
The first practical oscillators were based on electric arcs, which
were used for lighting in the 19th century. The current through an
arc light is unstable due to its negative resistance, and often
breaks into spontaneous oscillations, causing the arc to make
hissing, humming or howling sounds which had been noticed by
Humphry Davy in 1821, Benjamin Silliman in 1822 Auguste Arthur
de la Rive in 1846, and David Edward Hughes in 1878. Ernst Lecher
in 1888 showed that the current through an electric arc could be
oscillatory.
An oscillator was built by Elihu Thomson in 1892 by placing an LC
tuned circuit in parallel with an electric arc and included a
magnetic blowout. Independently, in the same year, George Francis
FitzGerald realized that if the damping resistance in a resonant
circuit could be made zero or negative, the circuit would produce
oscillations, and, unsuccessfully, tried to build a negative
resistance oscillator with a dynamo, what would now be called a
parametric oscillator. The arc oscillator was rediscovered and
popularized by William Duddell in 1900. Duddell, a student at
London Technical College, was investigating the hissing arc
effect. He attached an LC circuit (tuned circuit) to the electrodes
of an arc lamp, and the negative resistance of the arc excited
oscillation in the tuned circuit. Some of the energy was radiated
as sound waves by the arc, producing a musical tone. Duddell
demonstrated his oscillator before the London Institute of
Electrical Engineers by sequentially connecting different tuned
circuits across the arc to play the national anthem "God Save the
Ǫueen". Duddell's "singing arc" did not generate frequencies above
the audio range.