Principles of Transistor Circuits, 9th Edition

Chapter 11

Sinusoidal oscillators

Introduction

Sinusoidal oscillators have widespread applications in electronics. To name only a few obvious examples, they provide the carrier source in transmitters and form part of the frequency changer in superhet receivers. They are used for erasing and biasing in magnetic recording and time the clock pulses in computers. Many electronic measuring instruments incorporate oscillators and a variable-frequency oscillator forms part of a phase-locked-loop detector.

There are many different types of sinusoidal oscillator but all consist essentially of two parts:

1 A frequency-determining section which may be a resonant circuit or an RC network. The resonant circuit can be a combination of lumped inductance and capacitance, ...