Background of the Invention
The present invention concerns an oscillator circuit having digital temperature compensation utilizing two quartz oscillators, the quartz oscillators have different temperature behavior and the same inversion temperature.
In the GB-Patent Application No. 2,004,155 an oscillator is described, whereby two low frequency oscillators with a frequency of 32 kHz, usual for watch circuits, are used, having as far as possible the same quadratic temperature coefficients and different inversion temperatures.
It is known however that such low frequency quartzes are submitted to an appreciable ageing, cancelling much of the advantages of temperature compensation.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to disclose an oscillator circuit with digital temperature compensation offering without great expenditure a greater precision and suffering from less ageing.
Brief Summary of the Invention
According to the present invention one of the two oscillators is a high frequency oscillator.
Brief Description of the Drawing
The invention will be described further, by way of example, with reference to the accompanying drawings, in which:
FIG. 1 shows the parabolic temperature behavior of a high and of a low frequency resonator with a determined tuning; and
FIG. 2 shows a block circuit diagram of an oscillator circuit according to the invention.
Description of the Preferred Embodiment
The correction of the temperature compensation should be as small as possible, because the smaller the correction the smaller is the precision required for this correction. Therefore it has to be looked for oscillators which frequency deviations are small, for example such with high frequency quartz oscillators according to U.S. Pat. No. 4,071,797.
FIG. 1 shows the parabolic temperature behavior of the above-mentioned high frequency oscillator after division from 4.19 MHz to 32 kHZ, and the parabolic temperature behaviour of a known low frequency oscillator with a frequency of 32 kHZ.
We have:
and
wherein f.sub.10 is the frequency of the high frequency oscillator HF after frequency division and f.sub.20 is the frequency of the low frequency resonator LF, and T.sub.1,T.sub.2 are the inversion temperatures, and
.beta..sub.1 =-1.2.10.sup.-8 /(.degree.C.).sup.2 is the quadratic or parabolic temperature coefficient for the high frequency oscillator,
.beta..sub.2 =-3.6.10.sup.-8 /(.degree.C.).sup.2 is the parabolic temperature coefficient of the low frequency oscillator LF, and .gamma. is the cubic temperature coefficient, which will be neglected in the following examples.
For effecting the temperature compensation according to the invention the oscillators are chosen thus, that the inversion temperature points of both parabola are the same, that is that T.sub.1 =T.sub.2 =T.sub.o.
According to a first embodiment according to the invention the frequency of 4.2 MHz of the high frequency oscillator HF is divided according to the circuit of FIG. 2 to the same frequency of 32 kHZ as the frequency of the low frequency oscillator LF, which is a quartz tuning fork type according to U.S. Pat. No. 4,071,797. The divided signal and the signal from the low frequency oscillator are fed to a digital beat frequency generator DFG.
According to the formula for the frequency of correction f(T):
k can be calculated as follows:
which value is used in the correction circuit M and which can be stored in a PROM. After multiplication of the beat frequency with k in correction circuit M, the thus obtained correction signal is fed into the second frequency divider chain FT2 at an appropriate point. In the frequency divider chain FT2 the frequency is divided down to 1 Hz and simultaneously corrected. The outgoing signal AUS is fed into the timer circuit, which cooperates with the step motor.
The oscillator circuit described above may be used wherever a high operational accuracy, a favourable temperature and a long time behaviour is required, and wherever the space available is small. This applies, for example, in a wrist-watch or in a film camera.