Introduction to quartz resonator based electronic oscillators and development of electronic oscillators using inverted-mesa etched quartz resonators

The current work is primarily focused on the topic of the advancement of low phase noise and low jitter quartz crystal based electronic oscillators to frequencies beyond those presently available using quartz resonators that are manufactured using the traditional method that processes the entire sample to a uniform thickness. The method of inverted-mesa etching allows the resonant part of the quartz sample to be made much thinner than the remainder of the sample -- enabling higher resonant frequencies to be achieved. The current work will introduce and discuss the importance of phase noise and jitter in electronic oscillator applications such as wireless communication systems and sampled data systems. General oscillator and quartz resonator background will be provided to facilitate the understanding of the oscillator circuit used herein. The Two Transistor Butler Oscillator circuit is first shown to function using traditional quartz resonators and then using the new inverted-mesa etched quartz resonators without performance degradation. Ultimately, the oscillator is shown to function using a 356.875 MHz inverted-mesa etched 3rd overtone AT cut quartz resonator. It is, therefore, demonstrated that the inverted-mesa etched quartz resonator can be used in the same oscillator circuits that use the traditionally processed resonators and can enable the economical use of quartz crystal oscillators at frequencies above that which was possible prior to their development. Furthermore, the increase in frequency without requiring external multipliers shows that performance increases can be made at still higher frequencies, precipitating improvements in systems that were previously limited by existing levels of oscillator phase noise and jitter.