Simulation of crystal oscillator circuits using CAD techniques

It is hard to design an oscillator to specific parameters. Analysing an oscillator circuit is complicated and tedious, and measuring parameters is difficult because of the loading effect the measuring equipment has on the oscillator itself. As the requirements for oscillators become more stringent it will become necessary to design oscillators optimised to a particular specification. An obvious approach is to use computer aided design tools to simplify analysis of proposed designs. Recently, new simulators have become available which are better able to cope with the simulation of high Q feedback circuits. This paper presents the results of using such a simulator to analyse crystal oscillator circuits