Block Oscillators

A blocking oscillator is a type of electronic oscillator that generates a periodic waveform by alternately charging and discharging a capacitor through an inductor. The oscillator circuit is called a "blocking" oscillator because it is designed to generate a pulse waveform that blocks or isolates the DC voltage input to the output.

The basic design of a blocking oscillator consists of an inductor, a capacitor, and a transistor. When the transistor is turned on, the capacitor charges through the inductor until the voltage across the capacitor reaches a certain threshold, at which point the transistor turns off and the capacitor discharges through the inductor. This cycle repeats, generating a pulse waveform at the output.

Blocking oscillators are commonly used in various electronic circuits, such as voltage converters, voltage multipliers, and timing circuits. In voltage converter applications, the output of the blocking oscillator is connected to a transformer, which steps up or steps down the voltage. In voltage multiplier applications, multiple stages of the blocking oscillator are cascaded to generate higher voltages. In timing circuits, the oscillator is used to generate a precise frequency for clock signals.

One of the advantages of the blocking oscillator is its simplicity and low cost, as it requires only a few components to generate a waveform. It can also operate at high frequencies and can provide a high voltage output with relatively low power input. However, the blocking oscillator has a disadvantage of generating high levels of electromagnetic interference (EMI), due to the sharp edges of the pulse waveform.

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AI Technical Trustability Update

While working on an update to my RF Cafe Espresso Engineering Workbook project to add a couple calculators about FM sidebands (available soon). The good news is that AI provided excellent VBA code to generate a set of Bessel function plots. The bad news is when I asked for a table showing at which modulation indices sidebands 0 (carrier) through 5 vanish, none of the agents got it right. Some were really bad. The AI agents typically explain their reason and method correctly, then go on to produces bad results. Even after pointing out errors, subsequent results are still wrong. I do a lot of AI work and see this often, even with subscribing to professional versions. I ultimately generated the table myself. There is going to be a lot of inaccurate information out there based on unverified AI queries, so beware.

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