Discrete frequency synthesis using an analogue r.o.m.

A new analogue frequency synthesiser is introduced and experimentally demonstrated. It is based on a tapped delay line driven by a sinusoidal waveform, which provides analogue sinusoidal samples permanently stored at the output of the individual taps, thus operating as an analogue r.o.m. Frequency synthesis is accomplished by selectively reading-out these sinusoidal samples at a fixed clock rate through an analogue multiplexer. This system represents the analogue counterpart of a digital frequency synthesiser described by other authors, thus allowing similar architectures to be implemented for the generation of a large set of frequencies using analogue operations.