Quartz Crystal Oscillators

Quartz crystal oscillators are a drop-in, complete timing circuit. As mentioned previously, they offer excellent frequency tolerance and stability over the required temperature range while maintaining low jitter and phase noise. These passive components are optimized for performance and suit a wide variety of circuit designs and applications.

When it comes to incorporating crystal oscillators into your design application, there are a number of advantages to doing so, which we’ve highlighted below.

Unsurpassed frequency stability
We’ve said it already, but we cannot say enough about the stability and accuracy of crystal oscillators. While you can achieve a certain level of accuracy with traditional LC and RC circuits, there is still a limit to the stability you can expect. Since a crystal’s frequency stability is inherent to the crystal itself, you can already expect a heightened level of accuracy just by choosing crystal components for your design.

High Q
Crystal oscillators also offer an exceptional quality factor, or high Q. In short, quartz crystal oscillators are slower to die out, and can maintain their accurate frequency stability over longer periods of time when compared to their more traditional counterparts.

Versatile customization options
Because the frequency stability is inherent to the crystal itself, you can cut the crystal to a certain size, and at certain angles, to achieve a precise, unchanging frequency and optimize it for other factors, such as temperature fluctuations.

Low phase noise
Particularly in the telecommunications industry, phase noise is a critical consideration to any circuit design. Higher phase noise can result in a muddy signal. Since crystals primarily vibrate on one axis, only one phase is dominant, greatly reducing the overall phase noise.

Small size, big savings
Crystal oscillators are some of the most compact and inexpensive components in any design. This, combined with all the above-mentioned advantages, make crystal oscillators an excellent choice for a wide variety of applications.

Here at ECS Inc., we pride ourselves on manufacturing some of the best passive components and timing solutions in the industry. Our crystal components are available in fixed or configurable frequency XOs, VCXOs and TCXOs, with frequencies up to 1.5GHz and stabilities as low as ±10 ppm. They are available in industry-standard circuit packages that are as small as 2.0 x 1.6 mm. Whether you need a simple reference clock, or you’re developing a mission-critical electronics system, we have the right oscillators to support your needs.