Analog Circuit Design

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Instrumentation applications for a monolithic oscillatorA clock for all reasons

Jim Williams

Introduction

Oscillators are fundamental circuit building blocks. A substantial percentage of electronic apparatus utilizes oscillators, either as timekeeping references, clock sources, for excitation or other tasks. The most obvious oscillator application is a clock source in digital systems.¹ A second area is instrumentation. Transducer circuitry, carrier based amplifiers, sine wave formation, filters, interval generators and data converters all utilize different forms of oscillators. Although various techniques are common, a simply applied, broadly tuneable oscillator with good accuracy has not been available.

Clock types

Commonly employed oscillators ...