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AP242401 04.99
Ceramic Resonator Oscillators of the
C500 / C166 Microcontroller Family
7
Start-up- and Oscillation Reliability
The check of the start-up and oscillation reliability of the oscillation circuit is done by a verification
of the oscillation frequency, oscillation wave form, oscillation voltage, starting voltage and loop gain
by variation of temperature and supply voltage. The results of the analysis are summarized in a
table to find an area with stable conditions for a reliable oscillation. The first step is to determine the
values of the load capacitors and in the second step the start-up and oscillation reliability is checked
via the Safety Factor, see chapter 7.3.
This Application Note offers two ways to determine the load capacitance. The ’primary way’ which
is done with a typical sample and the ’advanced way’ which is done with a so called ’worst case
ceramic resonator’ with maximum values of the specified equivalent circuit constants. The
advanced way is only performed if the primary way does not result in an acceptable behavior.
The appendix includes recommendations for the right composition of external circuits relating to
different microcontrollers and ceramic resonators. These recommendations can be used for
standard PCBs in a standard environment. For microcontrollers and ceramic resonators where no
recommendations are available in the appendix the following description shows a possibility to find
the appropriate external circuits for the first prototypes used for evaluation.
Note: The analysis can only be performed for a 2 terminal type ceramic resonator (with no built in
loading capacitors). A 3 terminal type with integrated loading capacitors cannot be applied
for this analysis because a variation of the loading capacitors can only be performed down to
the integrated values and it is not possible to perform the negative resistance method to
check the loop gain. Murata uses special 3 terminal type samples for the analysis were the
load capacitors are not integrated. If you want to perform a 3 terminal type analysis please
contact Murata for help!
Note: It is not easy to find a physical ceramic resonator sample having the specified limit conditions
in an application system, which is the worst in main response and large spurious. It is
possible to simulate the limit conditions in a application system by adding external
components to the ceramic resonator but this costs additional analysis efforts. Because of
knowing the difficulty getting such a device Murata offers the service of analyzing the
customer systems.