VCO output power +flatness!?

Jan 08, 2005 2 Replies

hello!



I'm designing a VCO for my school project and need a help.. Could anybody tell me how does the output power (and the power flatness) depends on the capacitors and inductance in the tank circuit? You may find this question silly, but I realy need to know this;) I work with Colpitts and a varactor.



Thank you in advance,



Konrad



Can you point us to the actual schematic of your circuit? Details matter.

John Popelish

I assume that the limiting in your oscillator is done by "bottoming" in the transistor. (ie: the transistor's voltage swinging down to zero)

If this is the case, the output voltage swing will be nearly constant over the whole range of the VCO, assuming it continues to oscillator over the whole control range. You have an excess of drive to the transistor and the gain is limited only by the transistor's voltage falling to near zero.

If the limiting is done by the loss of gm method (unlikely), you will have to look at the tank circuit losses and the feedback ratio to see how they vary with variactor voltage.

-- kensmith@rahul.net forging knowledge

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