A high-quality analog oscillator using oversampling D/A conversion techniques

This paper describes a high-quality analog oscillator for low-frequency applications, which uses a combination of over-sampling and delta-sigma modulation. With the exception of a lowpass filter and a 1-bit D/A, the proposed circuit is entirely digital, providing accurate control over the oscillation frequency and amplitude. At the core of the oscillator is a digital simulation of an LC-tank circuit consisting of two cascaded integrators. This arrangement guarantees oscillation by constraining the poles of the resonator to locations on the z-plane unit-circle, even in a finite-precision implementation. To minimize circuit complexity, the entire oscillator is operated at the oversampled rate, thereby eliminating the associated interpolation filter. Furthermore, the incorporation of a delta-sigma modulator inside the resonator loop leads to a very efficient implementation requiring only 4 multi-bit adders and a 2-input multiplexor. The desired analog signal may be recovered by lowpass filtering the 1-bit output of the delta-sigma modulator. Experiments performed thus far have indicated an effective dynamic range exceeding 80 dB