Application Note 263 Sine Wave Generation Techniques

Producing and manipulating the sine wave function is a common problem encountered by circuit designers. Sine wave circuits pose a significant design challenge because they represent a constantly controlled linear oscillator. Sine wave circuitry is required in a number of diverse areas, including audio testing, calibration equipment, transducer drives, power conditioning and automatic test equipment (ATE). Control of frequency, amplitude or distortion level is often required and all three parameters must be simultaneously controlled in many applications. A number of techniques utilizing both analog and digital approaches are available for a variety of applications. Each individual circuit approach has inherent strengths and weaknesses which must be matched against any given application (see table).