Crystal oscillator

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A miniature 4 MHz quartz crystal enclosed in a hermetically sealed HC-49/US package, used as
the resonator in a crystal oscillator.
A crystal oscillator is an electronic circuit that uses the mechanical resonance of a vibrating
crystal of piezoelectric material to create an electrical signal with a very precise frequency. This
frequency is commonly used to keep track of time (as in quartz wristwatches), to provide a stable
clock signal for digital integrated circuits, and to stabilize frequencies for radio transmitters and
receivers. The most common type of piezoelectric resonator used is the quartz crystal, so
oscillator circuits designed around them were called "crystal oscillators".

Contents
[hide]
• 1 History
• 2 Operation
• 3 Modeling
○ 3.1 Electrical model
○ 3.2 Resonance modes
○ 3.3 Temperature effects
• 4 Electrical oscillators
○ 4.1 Spurious frequencies
○ 4.2 Commonly used crystal frequencies
• 5 Circuit notations and abbreviations
• 6 See also
• 7 References
 • 8 External links

[edit] History

Inside construction of a modern high performance HC-49 package quartz crystal

Piezoelectricity was discovered by Jacques and Pierre Curie in 1880. Paul Langevin first
investigated quartz resonators for use in sonar during World War I. The first crystal controlled
oscillator, using a crystal of Rochelle salt, was built in 1917 and patented[1] in 1918 by Alexander
M. Nicholson at Bell Telephone Laboratories, although his priority was disputed by Walter
Guyton Cady.[2] Cady built the first quartz crystal oscillator in 1921.[3] Other early innovators in
quartz crystal oscillators include G. W. Pierce and Louis Essen.
Quartz crystal oscillators were developed for high-stability frequency references during the
1920's and 1930's. By 1926 quartz crystals were used to control the frequency of radio
broadcasting stations and were popular with amateur radio operators. [4] A number of firms
started producing quartz crystals for electronic use during this time. Using what are now
considered primitive methods, about 100,000 crystal units were produced in the United States
during 1939. During WW2, demand for accurate frequency control of military radio equipment
spurred rapid development of the crystal manufacturing industry. Suitable quartz became a
critical war material, with much of it imported from Brazil.
Although crystal oscillators still most commonly use quartz crystals, devices using other
materials are becoming more common, such as ceramic resonators.
[edit] Operation
A crystal is a solid in which the constituent atoms, molecules, or ions are packed in a regularly
ordered, repeating pattern extending in all three spatial dimensions.
Almost any object made of an elastic material could be used like a crystal, with appropriate
transducers, since all objects have natural resonant frequencies of vibration. For example, steel is
very elastic and has a high speed of sound. It was often used in mechanical filters before quartz.
The resonant frequency depends on size, shape, elasticity, and the speed of sound in the material.
High-frequency crystals are typically cut in the shape of a simple, rectangular plate. Low-
frequency crystals, such as those used in digital watches, are typically cut in the shape of a
tuning fork. For applications not needing very precise timing, a low-cost ceramic resonator is
often used in place of a quartz crystal.
When a crystal of quartz is properly cut and mounted, it can be made to distort in an electric field
by applying a voltage to an electrode near or on the crystal. This property is known as
piezoelectricity. When the field is removed, the quartz will generate an electric field as it returns
to its previous shape, and this can generate a voltage. The result is that a quartz crystal behaves
like a circuit composed of an inductor, capacitor and resistor, with a precise resonant frequency.
(See RLC circuit.)
Quartz has the further advantage that its elastic constants and its size change in such a way that
the frequency dependence on temperature can be very low. The specific characteristics will
depend on the mode of vibration and the angle at which the quartz is cut (relative to its
crystallographic axes).[5] Therefore, the resonant frequency of the plate, which depends on its
size, will not change much, either. This means that a quartz clock, filter or oscillator will remain
accurate. For critical applications the quartz oscillator is mounted in a temperature-controlled
container, called a crystal oven, and can also be mounted on shock absorbers to prevent
perturbation by external mechanical vibrations.
Quartz timing crystals are manufactured for frequencies from a few tens of kilohertz to tens of
megahertz. More than two billion (2×109) crystals are manufactured annually. Most are small
devices for consumer devices such as wristwatches, clocks, radios, computers, and cellphones.
Quartz crystals are also found inside test and measurement equipment, such as counters, signal
generators, and oscilloscopes.
[edit] Modeling
[edit] Electrical model

Electronic symbol for a piezoelectric crystal resonator

Schematic symbol and equivalent circuit for a quartz crystal in an oscillator

A quartz crystal can be modelled as an electrical network with a low impedance (series) and a
high impedance (parallel) resonance point spaced closely together. Mathematically (using the
Laplace transform) the impedance of this network can be written as:

or,

where s is the complex frequency (s = jω), ωs is the series resonant frequency in radians per
second and ωp is the parallel resonant frequency in radians per second.
Adding additional capacitance across a crystal will cause the parallel resonance to shift
downward. This can be used to adjust the frequency at which a crystal oscillator oscillates.
Crystal manufacturers normally cut and trim their crystals to have a specified resonant frequency
with a known 'load' capacitance added to the crystal. For example, a 6 pF 32 kHz crystal has a
parallel resonance frequency of 32,768 Hz when a 6.0 pF capacitor is placed across the crystal.
Without this capacitance, the resonance frequency is higher than 32,768 Hz.
[edit] Resonance modes
A quartz crystal provides both series and parallel resonance. The series resonance is a few
kilohertz lower than the parallel one. Crystals below 30 MHz are generally operated between
series and parallel resonance, which means that the crystal appears as an inductive reactance in
operation. Any additional circuit capacitance will thus pull the frequency down. For a parallel
resonance crystal to operate at its specified frequency, the electronic circuit has to provide a total
parallel capacitance as specified by the crystal manufacturer.
Crystals above 30 MHz (up to >200 MHz) are generally operated at series resonance where the
impedance appears at its minimum and equal to the series resistance. For these crystals the series
resistance is specified (<100 Ω) instead of the parallel capacitance. To reach higher frequencies,
a crystal can be made to vibrate at one of its overtone modes, which occur at multiples of the
fundamental resonant frequency. Only odd numbered overtones are used. Such a crystal is
referred to as a 3rd, 5th, or even 7th overtone crystal. To accomplish this, the oscillator circuit
usually includes additional LC circuits to select the wanted overtone..
[edit] Temperature effects
A crystal's frequency characteristic depends on the shape or 'cut' of the crystal. A tuning fork
crystal is usually cut such that its frequency over temperature is a parabolic curve centered
around 25 °C. This means that a tuning fork crystal oscillator will resonate close to its target
frequency at room temperature, but will slow down when the temperature either increases or
decreases from room temperature. A common parabolic coefficient for a 32 kHz tuning fork
crystal is −0.04 ppm/°C².
In a real application, this means that a clock built using a regular 32 kHz tuning fork crystal will
keep good time at room temperature, lose 2 minutes per year at 10 degrees Celsius above (or
below) room temperature and lose 8 minutes per year at 20 degrees Celsius above (or below)
room temperature due to the quartz crystal.
[edit] Electrical oscillators

A crystal used in hobby radio control equipment to select frequency.

The crystal oscillator circuit sustains oscillation by taking a voltage signal from the quartz
resonator, amplifying it, and feeding it back to the resonator. The rate of expansion and
contraction of the quartz is the resonant frequency, and is determined by the cut and size of the
crystal. When the energy of the generated output frequencies matches the losses in the circuit, an
oscillation can be sustained.
A regular timing crystal contains two electrically conductive plates, with a slice or tuning fork of
quartz crystal sandwiched between them. During startup, the circuit around the crystal applies a
random noise AC signal to it, and purely by chance, a tiny fraction of the noise will be at the
resonant frequency of the crystal. The crystal will therefore start oscillating in synchrony with
that signal. As the oscillator amplifies the signals coming out of the crystal, the signals in the
crystal's frequency band will become stronger, eventually dominating the output of the oscillator.
Natural resistance in the circuit and in the quartz crystal filter out all the unwanted frequencies.
The output frequency of a quartz oscillator can be either the fundamental resonance or a multiple
of the resonance, called an overtone frequency. High frequency crystals are often designed to
operate at third, fifth, or seventh overtones.
A major reason for the wide use of crystal oscillators is their high Q factor. A typical Q for a
quartz oscillator ranges from 104 to 106, compared to perhaps 102 for an LC oscillator. The
maximum Q for a high stability quartz oscillator can be estimated as Q = 1.6 × 107/f, where f is
the resonance frequency in megahertz.
One of the most important traits of quartz crystal oscillators is that they can exhibit very low
phase noise. In many oscillators, any spectral energy at the resonant frequency will be amplified
by the oscillator, resulting in a collection of tones at different phases. In a crystal oscillator, the
crystal mostly vibrates in one axis. Therefore, only one phase is dominant. This property of low
phase noise makes them particularly useful in telecommunications where stable signals are
needed, and in scientific equipment where very precise time references are needed.
Environmental changes of temperature, humidity, pressure, and vibration can change the
resonant frequency of a quartz crystal, but there are several designs that reduce these
environmental effects. These include the TCXO, MCXO, and OCXO (defined below). These
designs (particularly the OCXO) often produce devices with excellent short-term stability. The
limitations in short-term stability are due mainly to noise from electronic components in the
oscillator circuits. Long term stability is limited by aging of the crystal.
Due to aging and environmental factors such as temperature and vibration, it is hard to keep even
the best quartz oscillators within one part in 10−10 of their nominal frequency without constant
adjustment. For this reason, atomic oscillators are used for applications that require better long-
term stability and accuracy.
Although crystals can be fabricated for any desired resonant frequency, within technological
limits, in actual practice today engineers design crystal oscillator circuits around relatively few
standard frequencies, such as 3.58 MHz, 10 MHz, 14.318 MHz, 20 MHz, 33.33 MHz, and
40 MHz. The vast popularity of the 3.58 MHz and 14.318 MHz crystals is attributed initially to
low cost resulting from economies of scale resulting from the popularity of television and the
fact that this frequency is involved in synchronizing to the colorburst signal necessary to display
color on an NTSC or PAL based television set. Using frequency dividers, frequency multipliers
and phase locked loop circuits, it is practical to derive a wide range of frequencies from one
reference frequency.
Care must be taken to use only one crystal oscillator source when designing circuits to avoid
subtle failure modes of metastability in electronics. If this is not possible, the number of distinct
crystal oscillators, PLLs, and their associated clock domains should be rigorously minimized,
through techniques such as using a subdivision of an existing clock instead of a new crystal
source. Each new distinct crystal source needs to be rigorously justified, since each one
introduces new, difficult to debug probabilistic failure modes, due to multiple crystal
interactions, into equipment.
[edit] Spurious frequencies
For crystals operated in series resonance, significant (and temperature-dependent) spurious
responses may be experienced.. These responses typically appear some tens of kilohertz above
the wanted series resonance.. Even if the series resistances at the spurious resonances appear
higher than the one at wanted frequency, the oscillator may lock at a spurious frequency (at some
temperatures).. This is generally avoided by using low impedance oscillator circuits to enhance
the series resistance differences..
[edit] Commonly used crystal frequencies
Crystals can be manufactured for oscillation over a wide range of freqeuncies, from a few
kilohertz up to several hundred megahertz. Many applications call for a crystal oscillator
frequency conveniently related to some other desired frequency, so certain crystal frequencies
are made in large quantities and stocked by electronics distributors.

Frequency
Primary uses
(MHz)
 Real-time clocks, quartz watches and clocks; allows binary division to 1 Hz
0.032768
signal (215 × 1 Hz)

UART clock; allows integer division to common baud rates. (= 213 × 32 × 52. 16 ×
1.8432
115200 baud or 96 × 16 × 1200 baud)

2.4576 UART clock; allows integer division to common baud rates up to 38400

3.2768 Allows binary division to 100 Hz (32768 × 100 Hz, or 215 × 100 Hz)

3.575611 PAL M color subcarrier

NTSC M color subcarrier. Because these are very common and inexpensive they
3.579545
are used in many other applications, for example DTMF generators

3.582056 PAL N color subcarrier

3.686400 UART clock (2 × 1.8432 MHz); allows integer division to common baud rates

4.096000 Allows binary division to 1 kHz (212 × 1 kHz)

4.194304 Real-time clocks, divides to 1 Hz signal (222 × 1 Hz)

The RDS signal bit rate is at 1.1875 kbit/s. While the frequency of 4.332MHz is
4.332 the most commonly used crystal resonator, its multiples (2 × 4.332MHz =
8.664MHz or 4 × 4.332MHz = 17.328MHz) have been used also.

4.43361875 PAL B/D/G/H/I and NTSC M4.43 color subcarrier

Used in CDMA systems; divided to 1.2288 MHz baseband frequency as specified

4.9152
by J-STD-008

Digital audio systems - DAT, MiniDisc, sound cards; 128 × 48 kHz (27 ×
6.144
48 kHz). Also allows integer division to common UART baud rates up to 38400.
 Allows binary division to 100 Hz (65536 × 100 Hz, or 216 × 100 Hz); used also in
6.5536
red boxes

7.15909 NTSC M color subcarrier (2 × 3.579545 MHz)

7.3728 UART clock (4 × 1.8432 MHz); allows integer division to common baud rates

8.86724 PAL B/G/H color subcarrier (2 × 4.433618 MHz)

Allows integer division to 1024 kHz and binary division to lower freqeuncies that
9.216
are whole multiples of 1 Hz.

Used in CDMA systems (2 × 4.9152); divided to 1.2288 MHz baseband

9.83040
frequency

Used in radio receivers; mixes with 10.7 MHz intermediate frequency yielding
10.245
455 kHz signal, a common second IF for FM radio [1]

11.0592 UART clock (6 × 1.8432 MHz); allows integer division to common baud rates

Used in compact disc digital audio systems and CDROM drives; allows binary
11.2896
division to 44.1 kHz (256 × 44.1 kHz), 22.05 kHz, and 11.025 kHz

Used in USB systems as the reference clock for the full-speed PHY rate of 12
12.0000
Mbit/s, or multiplied up using a PLL to clock high speed PHYs at 480 Mbit/s

Digital audio systems - DAT, MiniDisc, sound cards; 256 × 48 kHz (28 ×
12.288
48 kHz). Also allows integer division to common UART baud rates up to 38400.

Master clock for PAL/NTSC DVD players, Digital TV receivers etc. (13.5 MHz
13.500
is an exact multiple of the PAL and NTSC line frequencies)

13.56 Common contactless smartcard frequency (ISO/IEC 14443)

13.875 Used in some teletext circuits; 2 × 6.9375 MHz (clock frequency of PAL B
 teletext; SECAM uses 6.203125 MHz, NTSC M uses 5.727272 MHz, PAL G
uses 6.2031 MHz, and PAL I uses 4.4375 MHz clock)

NTSC M color subcarrier (4 × 3.579545 MHz). Common seed clock for modern
14.31818
PC motherboard clock generator chips, also common on VGA cards.

14.7456 UART clock (8 × 1.8432 MHz); allows integer division to common baud rates

Commonly used for down-conversion and sampling in GPS-receivers. Generates

intermediate frequency signal at +4.092 MHz. 16.3676 or 16.367667 MHz are
16.368
sometimes used to avoid perfect lineup between sampling frequency and GPS
spreading code.

Used in compact disc digital audio systems and CDROM drives; allows integer
16.9344 division to 44.1 kHz (384 × 44.1 kHz), 22.05 kHz, and 11.025 kHz. Also allows
integer division to common UART baud rates.

17.734475 PAL B/G/H color subcarrier (4 × 4.433618 MHz)

UART clock (10 × 1.8432 MHz); allows integer division to common baud rates.
18.432 Also allows integer division to 48 kHz (384 × 48 kHz), 96 kHz, and 192 kHz
samplerates used in high-end digital audio.

Used in CDMA systems (4 × 4.9152); divided to 1.2288 MHz baseband

19.6608
frequency

20.000 10 Mbit/s ethernet

22.1184 UART clock (12 × 1.8432 MHz); allows integer division to common baud rates

Digital audio systems - DAT, MiniDisc, AC'97, sound cards; 512 × 48 kHz (29 ×
24.576
48 kHz)

25.000 Fast Ethernet MII clock (100 MHz / 4-bit nibble)

25.175 Common Video Graphics Array pixelclock (i.e. 640x350@70 Hz,640x400@70

 Hz, 640x480@60 Hz) [6]

Commonly used as a reference clock for GSM and UMTS handsets. (26 MHz is
26.000
exactly 96 × the GSM bit rate)

Master clock for PAL/NTSC DVD players, Digital TV receivers etc. (27 MHz is
27.000
an exact multiple of the PAL and NTSC line frequencies)

29.4912 UART clock (16 × 1.8432 MHz); allows integer division to common baud rates

33.33 common CPU clock

40.000 common CPU clock

50.000 Fast Ethernet (2 x 25MHz)