On Fri, 12 Mar 2004 15:02:30 -0800, John Larkin
wrote:

On Fri, 12 Mar 2004 16:31:19 -0600, John Fields
wrote:

On Fri, 12 Mar 2004 17:57:24 +0000, Paul Burridge
wrote:


Great. So without a spectrum analyser there's no way to tell? If I
examine the output of the multiplier, it's very messy. There's a
dominant 3rd harmonic alright (my frequency counter resolves it
without difficulty) but the scope trace reveals a number of 'ghost
traces' of different frequencies and amplitudes co-incident with the
dominant trace. All rather confusing. I suppose the only answer is to
build Reg's band pass filter and stick it between the inverter output
and the multiplier input? shrug

---
You may want to try something like this:


COUNTER SCOPE COUNTER
| | |
| | |
FIN--[50R]-+-[1N4148]---+----+-------+---FOUT
| |
[L] [C]
| |
GND----------------------+----+

The 50 ohm resistor is the internal impedance of a function generator,
and when I set it to output a square wave at 1.5VPP, I got 10.8kHz for
the fundamental of the tank. Then I tuned the function generator down
until I got a peak out of the tank, and here's what I found:

Fin Fout Vout fout/fin
kHz kHz VPP
-----|-----|------|---------
10.8 10.8 0.9 1.0
3.58 10.8 0.25 3.02 ~ 3
2.14 10.8 0.2 5.05 ~ 5

So with a square wave in there were no even harmonics and it was easy
to trap the 3rd and 5th harmonics with a tank.


Next, I tried it with a 3VPP sine wave in and got:

Fin Fout Vout fout/fin
kHz kHz VPP
-----|-----|------|---------
10.8 10.8 1.3 1.0
5.39 10.8 0.9 ~ 2.0
2.14 10.8 0.3 5.05 ~ 5

So it looks like the second and the fifth harmonics were there. There
were also some other responses farther down, but I just wanted to see
primarily whether the fifth had enough amplitude to work with, and
apparently it does, so I let the rest of it slide.

So, it looks like if you square up your oscillator's output to 50% duty
cycle you could get the 5th harmonic without too much of a problem. If
you can't, then clip the oscillator's output with a diode or make its
duty cycle less than or greater than 50%, and you ought to be able to
get the 5th that way.

Historical note: about 1960, a guy at HP was doing exactly this with
some new diodes, and he got way more higher harmonics than theory
predicts. To figure it out, they hooked up the just-invented HP185
sampling scope (which then used avalanche transistors to make its
sampling pulses) and discovered the diode reverse-recovery snap
phenom. Soon the scope itself was using this effect. They were
originally called Boff diodes, after the discoverer Frank Boff, but
the name didn't stick (wonder why?) and they became "snap diodes" and
later "step-recovery diodes". I think I may have the HP Journal
article around somewhere.

See page 31:

http://cp.literature.agilent.com/lit...5980-2090E.pdf

---
:-)

--
John Fields