Task 6: Op-Amp RC Oscillators

Discrete Amplifier

Joseph Arsenault
Ryan Dufour
Phil Robb

Abstract

The design, simulation, and construction of an op-amp RCC oscillator is described. The circuit will be built us-
ing an LF357 operational amplifier with ±12V supply rails. The Vp−p of the output of the oscilaltor will be 3V,
and the circuit will be constructed three different ways to oscillate at 3 different frequencies, 1 kHz, 10 kHz and
100 kHz. The final results are as follows. For the 1 kHz oscillator, the magnitude was measured at 3.1 V, with a
frequency of 992 Hz. For the 10 kHz oscillator, the magnitude was measured at 3.08 V, with a frequency of 10.04
kHz. For the 100 kHz oscillator, the magnitude was measured at 3.15 V, with a frequency of 98.7 kHz.

Electrical and Computer Engineering

University of Maine
ECE - 343
May 9, 2018
Contents

1 Introduction 1

2 Circuit Development 1

3 Experimental Implementation 4

4 Discussion 9

5 Conclusion 10
List of Figures

1 General schematic RC oscillator [1] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

2 Simulated 10 kHz oscillator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

3 Time domain signal 10kHz . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

4 Time domain signal 1kHz . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

5 Circuit Schematic for 1kHz oscillator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

6 Transient response for 1kHz oscillator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

7 FFT for 1kHz oscillator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

8 Circuit Schematic for 10kHz oscillator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

9 Transient response for 10kHz oscillator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

10 FFT for 10kHz oscillator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

11 Circuit Schematic for 100kHz oscillator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

12 Transient response for 100kHz oscillator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

13 FFT for 100kHz oscillator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

1 Introduction

This report describes the design, implementation and test of an RC op-amp oscillator which will oscillate
at 1 kHz, 10 kHz and 100 kHz with a 3Vp−p amplitude. Figure 1 below shows the general schematic for
the oscillator.

Figure 1: General schematic RC oscillator [1]

A positive feedback network is used to determine the frequency of oscillation, while the negative feedback
network determines the magnitude of the loop gain. The diodes in the negative feedback path are used to
determine the final amplitude of the oscillator output.The LF357 single op-amp IC package will be used
for the purposes of this task. 1N914 sginal diodes will be used as the gain limiters.

Section 2 of this report describes the design, and when relevant, the simulations of the experiments. Ex-
perimental results and implementation are addressed in section 3. A discussion of the results, sources of
error, and areas of possible improvement are outlined in section 4. Section 5 concludes this report.

2 Circuit Development

In this section, the derivation of the oscillator values simulations will be explained. To derive the oscilla-
tion conditions, the non-inverting amplifier gain, K, the passive components, R and C, and their multipli-
ers, n and m, must be considered. The simulated schematic for the 10 kHz oscillator is shown in Figure 2
below.

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 Figure 2: Simulated 10 kHz oscillator

In order for oscillation to occur, the phase shift must equal zero and the loop gain in Equation 1 must be
true. Otherwise, the IC operational amplifier, nor the discrete amplifier constructed in previous tasks will
oscillate

|A(jω)B(jω)| = 1 (1)

It must also be true that the phase shift is equal to zero for the non-inverting amplifier as well. To deter-
mine the oscillation frequency, the circuit needs to be analyzed. Specifically the nodes between R and C1
in the schematic (known as Vy ), and the node at the positive input to the operational amplifier (known as
Vx ). Equation 2 is the start of the derivation.

Vx Vx Vy
β(jω) = = ∗ (2)
Vout Vy Vout

Using this, and nodal analysis, Kirchoff’s current law may be applied as shown in equation 3 below.

Vy − Vout Vy Vy
+ + =0 (3)
Zc nR R + ZmC

The impedance two seperate capacitors are accounted for in these equations. After further manipulation
where jω is equal to s, the overall loop function L(s) and the feedback factor function β(s), are shown in
Equation ?? and Equation 5 below.

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 sC ∗ nR
β(s) = (4)
[1 + sC ∗ nR][1 + s ∗ mC ∗ R] + s ∗ mC ∗ nR
where m and n are multipliers for a resistor and a capacitor.
R2a sC ∗ nR
L(s) = (1 + ) (5)
R1 [1 + sC ∗ nR][1 + s ∗ mC ∗ R] + s ∗ mC ∗ nR

The numerator is an imaginary number when jω is inserted in place of s, which means it has a constant
phase angle of 90 degrees. The overall loop function, L(jω), will have a phase shift of zero degrees only if
the denominator has a phase shift of 90 degrees. After substitution, the new equation is shown in Equa-
tion 6 below.

[1 − ωC ∗ mC ∗ nR ∗ R] + jω[C ∗ nR ∗ mC ∗ R + mC ∗ nR] (6)

Using the condition of the phase angle being 90 degrees, the final equation for oscillation can be derived
and is shown below in Equation 7 below.

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fosc = √ (7)
2πRC nm

The resulting values are reflected in Figure 2 for the value for oscillation at 10 kHz. After running these
values for the resistors and capacitors through simulation, the results for the 10 kHz oscillation frequency
is shown in Figure 3 below.

Figure 3: Time domain signal 10kHz

The second simulation was ran for a value of 1 kHz oscillation frequency. After calculations, the capaciotrs
in the positive feedback network were change from 100 pF to 95 pF, and yielded the correct frequency out-
put. The time domain out is shown below in Figure 4.

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 Figure 4: Time domain signal 1kHz

3 Experimental Implementation

The experimental design required several component value changes in order to meet specifications. In ad-
dition, an LM356 was utilized for the op amp. The discrete amplifier implemented in Tasks 1 through 5
was not used in this lab due to it no longer remaining operational. Three different oscillator circuits were
constructed in this lab. The first was a design that operated at 1kHz with a 3Vpp amplitude. The experi-
mental circuit can be seen in Figure 5.

Figure 5: Circuit Schematic for 1kHz oscillator

The values that had to be changed can seen in Table 1 below.

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 Table 1: Simulated vs. Experimental 1k oscillator

Component Simulated Value Experimental Value

R1 1 kΩ 2 kΩ
R2A 880 Ω 1.7 kΩ
R2B 2.4 kΩ 20 kΩ
R 160 kΩ 160 kΩ
nR 160 kΩ 160 kΩ
mC 100 pF 10 nF
C 100 pF 5 nF

One of the largest changes needed was increasing the R2B by nearly a factor of ten to compensate for lose
of gain from having to increase the capacitance in order to bring down the oscillation frequency. The tran-
sient response of the circuit was measured using the Analog Digilent Discovery and can be seen in Figure
6.

Figure 6: Transient response for 1kHz oscillator

The peak to peak was measured to be 3.1V and oscillated at 992 Hz. The FFT for the 1kHz can be seen
in Figure 7.

Figure 7: FFT for 1kHz oscillator

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This was measured using the Analog Discovery Scope’s FFT mode. It should be noted that significant
aliasing occurred using the spectrum analyzer and the signal had to be significantly over sampled to achieve
more reliable results.

The circuit was then configured to operate with a 10kHz oscillation. This set up can be seen in Figure 8.

Figure 8: Circuit Schematic for 10kHz oscillator

The major values that needed to be altered in order to meet specifications can be seen in Table 2.

Table 2: Simulated vs. Experimental 10k oscillator

Component Simulated Value Experimental Value

R1 1 kΩ 2 kΩ
R2A 880 Ω 1 kΩ
R2B 2.4 kΩ 2.2 kΩ
R 160 kΩ 160 kΩ
nR 160 kΩ 160 kΩ
mC 95 pF 100 pF
C 95 pF 100 pF

The circuit operated mostly as expected and required only a minor change of resistors to reduce the gain.
In addition the capacitance had to be increased slightly compared to the simulated value. The transient
response of the circuit can be seen in Figure 9.

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 Figure 9: Transient response for 10kHz oscillator

The peak to peak was measured to be 3.08V and oscillated at 9.89kHz. In addition the FFT was per-
formed in the same manner as the 1kHz, and can be seen in Figure 10.

Figure 10: FFT for 10kHz oscillator

The signal can be seen to have significant amount of power distributed at the second and the third har-
monic. This is a result of the signal not being a pure sinusoid. The final design was to utilize the circuit
with 100kHz oscillation. The experimental schematic for 100kHz oscillation can be seen in Figure 11.

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 Figure 11: Circuit Schematic for 100kHz oscillator

The changes necessary to allow for the circuit to meet specifications can be seen in Table 3.

Table 3: Simulated vs. Experimental 100k oscillator

Component Experimental Value

R1 1 kΩ
R2A 973 Ω
R2B 2kΩ
R 160 kΩ
nR 160 kΩ
mC 100 pF
C 20 pF

The 20pF was created by placing five 100pF capacitors in series, it should be noted that this no longer re-
sults in equality between the two capacitor branches, meaning that the ”m” factor is now 5. The transient
response for this circuit can be seen in Figure 12.

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 Figure 12: Transient response for 100kHz oscillator

The signal can be seen to have a peak to peak of 3.15V and a frequency of 98.2kHz. The peak to peak
is just on the threshold of being greater than the +5%, but still meets specifications. The FFT for the
100kHz signal can be seen in Figure 13.

Figure 13: FFT for 100kHz oscillator

The signal can be seen to have only a small portion of power distributed at the first and second harmonic.
Notably, oversampling the signal while operating at 100kHz resulted in some strange results from the Ana-
log Discovery, as a result the signal was done with the minimum amount of sampling necessary to generate
the FFT.

4 Discussion

This lab served as an introduction to RC operational amplifier oscillators. Specifically, it represents how
changing values of capacitors and resistors in the positive and negative feedback affect the gain and the
frequency of oscillation.

In Table 4 below, the final experimental value for the three oscillators built during this lab can be seen.

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 Table 4: Final experimental values

Component 1 kΩ Oscillator 10 kΩ Oscillator 100 kΩ Oscillator

R1 2 kΩ 2 kΩ 1 kΩ
R2a 1.7 kΩ 880 Ω 973 Ω
R2b 20 kΩ 2.2 kΩ 1 kΩ
R 160 kΩ 160 kΩ 160 kΩ
Ro 160 kΩ 160 kΩ 160 kΩ
C1 5 nF 100 pF 20 pF
C2 10 nF 100 pF 100 pF

It is shown that by increasing the capacitance seen in the positive feedback network, the frequency de-
creases. Also, it is noticed that that the resistor network for the negative feedback, which determines the
gain, has larger values at lower frequencies. This correlates with lower frequency RC oscillators will have
less magnitude then their higher frequency counterparts due to the speed of the charging and discharging
of capacitors. The final values for experimental oscillation frequency and magnitude are shown in Table 5
below.

Table 5: Experimental frequency and magnitude values

Measurement 1 kHz Oscillator 10 kHz Oscillator 100 kHz Oscillator

Vp−p 3.1 V 3.08 3.15
fosc 992 Hz 10.04 kHz 98.7 kHz

Some of the reason for the variation in results may be the percentage difference from ideal of every indi-
vidual component on the breadboard. The digilent network analyzer would also cause problems due to
parasitic capacitance’s and noise through its wires, including cross-talk between wires. Also, the FFT was
giving significant error in standard settings. To prevent aliasing issues, the sampling rate needs to be in-
creased dramatically. Essentially, it needs to be over-sampled to represent the frequency spectrum.

5 Conclusion

The characterization of an RC oscillator constructed using an operational amplifier is described. The mea-
surements were conducted with the digilent analog discovery 2 network analyzer and results were plotted
using Matlab. For the 1 kHz oscillator, the magnitude was measured at 3.1 V, with a frequency of 992 Hz.
For the 10 kHz oscillator, the magnitude was measured at 3.08 V, with a frequency of 10.04 kHz. For the
100 kHz oscillator, the magnitude was measured at 3.15 V, with a frequency of 98.7 kHz. This lab served
as an introduction to the RC oscillator. Future experiments would need to be conducted using components
with less variance in values.

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References
[1] N. W. Emanatoglu. (2018) Task 6 [Online]

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