Attività

Temperature performance of crystal oscillator

Crystal oscillators are able to provide a much better level of performance than that provided by LC resonator circuits. Nevertheless crystal oscillators are still affected by temperature.

The angle of the cut and other aspects of the quartz crystal have a major impact on the performance.

As a result special cuts are defined and one known as the AT cut is the most widely used for these and many other quartz crystal RF applications. This gives a good level of performance for RF circuits in terms of suppression of unwanted modes of vibration as well as the frequency range available, and also the temperature stability.

Despite this, AT cut crystals on their own cannot meet the requirements for many applications and temperature compensation is required if they are to perform satisfactorily over the required range – often 1 – 70°C at elast is needed.