subject: The introduction of pll fm transmitter [print this page] The common characteristic of all of the previous low power FM transmitters I've built over the decades, is that their operating frequency is determined by an LC resonant circuit. Some of them had excellent stability, some of them didn't, but I had always wanted to make one that is crystal controlled. Various schemes had been considered from time-to-time, including the direct approach of modulating the load capacitance of a a crystal oscillator, a whimsical phase modulation scheme involving a phase shifter, some balanced modulators, and limiting amplifiers, and at times, the down-to-earth and sober approach of modulating a VCO within a phase locked loop (PLL). While browsing Digikey's online catalog, I found the LMX1601 frequency synthesizer chip and thought: "Just maybe, the PLL approach is finally within my grasp."
A phase-locked loop or phase lock loop (PLL) is a control system that tries to generate an output signal whose phase is related to the phase of the input "reference" signal. It is an electronic circuit consisting of a variable frequency oscillator and a phase detector that compares the phase of the signal derived from the oscillator to an input signal. The signal from the phase detector is used to control the oscillator in a feedback loop. The circuit compares the phase of the input signal with the phase of a signal derived from its output oscillator and adjusts the frequency of its oscillator to keep the phases matched.
Phase-locked loops are widely used in radio, telecommunications, computers and other electronic applications. They may generate stable frequencies, recover a signal from a noisy communication channel, or distribute clock timing pulses in digital logic designs such as microprocessors. Since a single integrated circuit can provide a complete phase-locked-loop building block, the technique is widely used in modern electronic devices, with output frequencies from a fraction of a hertz up to many gigahertz.
Structure and Function
Phase-locked loop mechanisms may be implemented as either analog or digital circuits. Both implementations use the same basic structure. Block diagram of a PLL (without filter) Both analog and digital PLL circuits include four basic elements: * Phase detector, * Filter * Variable frequency electronic oscillator, and * Feedback path (which often includes a frequency divider).
