Instrumentation applications for a monolithic oscillator

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. 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. Commonly employed oscillators are resonant element based or resistor–capacitor (RC) types. Quartz crystals and ceramic resonators offer high initial accuracy and low drift but are essentially untuneable over any significant range. Typical RC types have lower initial accuracy and increased drift but are easily tuned over broad ranges. A problem with conventional RC oscillators is that considerable design effort is required to achieve good specifications. A new device, LTC1799, is also an RC type but fills the need for a simply applied, broadly tuneable, accurate oscillator. Its accuracy and drift specifications fit between resonator-based types and typical RC oscillators. Additionally, its board footprint, a 5-pin SOT-23 package and a single resistor, is notably small.