A Simple Treatment of the Superregenerative Oscillator Used to Detect Conductance Changes

This article presents a treatment of the problem of the superregenerative oscillator used to detect changes in the equivalent conductance of the coil of its resonant circuit. It is shown that if the conductance changes occur at a rate much less than the quenching frequency of the oscillator, and a rectangular quench waveform is employed, it is possible to obtain an expression relating the factors upon which the oscillator sensitivity depends without resorting to difficult mathematics. This method, using physical reasoning, should give the student a simple introduction to the subject.