| Solitons are a special class of pulse-shaped waves that propagate in nonlinear dispersive media while maintaining their spatial confinement. They are found throughout nature where the proper balance between nonlinearity and dispersion is achieved. Examples of the soliton phenomena include shallow water waves, vibrations in a nonlinear spring-mass lattice, acoustic waves in plasma, and optical pulses in fiber optic cable.; In electronics, the nonlinear transmission line (NLTL) serves as a nonlinear dispersive medium that propagates voltage solitons. Electrical solitons on the NLTL have been actively investigated over the last 40 years, particularly in the microwave domain, for sharp pulse generation applications and for high-speed RF and microwave sampling applications. In these past studies the NLTL has been predominantly used as a 2-port system where a high-frequency input is required to generate a sharp soliton output through a transient process.; One meaningful extension of the past 2-port NLTL works would be to construct a 1-port self-sustained electrical soliton oscillator by properly combining the NLTL with an amplifier (positive active feedback). Such an oscillator would self-start by growing from ambient noise to produce a train of periodic soliton pulses in steady-state, and hence would make a self-contained soliton generator not requiring an external high-frequency input. While such a circuit may offer a new direction in the field of electrical pulse generation, there has not been a robust electrical soliton oscillator reported to date to the best of our knowledge.; In this thesis we introduce the first robust electrical soliton oscillator, which is able to self-generate a stable, periodic train of electrical solitons. This new oscillator is made possible by combining the NLTL with a unique nonlinear amplifier that is able to "tame" the unruly dynamics of the NLTL. The principle contribution of this thesis is the identification of the key instability mechanisms of solitons in a closed-loop oscillator and the development of the necessary stabilizing mechanisms. Demonstration of the concepts developed were in the form of three prototypes: a low MHz discrete prototype, a microwave discrete prototype, and a chip-scale, GHz prototype. |
