Technical Article: A Technical Introduction To Crystal Oscillators

Crystals and Crystal Oscillators are the most important components for frequency control applications like telecommunication and data transmission. The reasons are high frequency stability, high quality factor of the resonance, low temperature drift and reasonable prices. The wide range of crystal oscillators requires exact specification to ensure optimal performance. Standard Crystal Oscillators or XOs provide a stability of ±100ppm with +5V (+3.3V) supply voltage in DIP-14, 14mm x 9mm or 7 x 5 mm SMD-packages. Applications are clocks for microprocessors and the consumer electronic market. Due to price-sensitive applications the requirements of the oscillators are mainly defined by case-style, frequency, stability, output signal and temperature range.