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Communication circuits Wireless tuning and filtering {{Electronics-stub
In radio
Radio is the technology of signaling and communicating using radio waves. Radio waves are electromagnetic waves of frequency between 30 hertz (Hz) and 300 gigahertz (GHz). They are generated by an electronic device called a transmit ...
equipment, Automatic Frequency Control (AFC), also called Automatic Fine Tuning (AFT), is a method or circuit to automatically keep a resonant circuit
An LC circuit, also called a resonant circuit, tank circuit, or tuned circuit, is an electric circuit consisting of an inductor, represented by the letter L, and a capacitor, represented by the letter C, connected together. The circuit can ac ...
tuned to the frequency
Frequency is the number of occurrences of a repeating event per unit of time. It is also occasionally referred to as ''temporal frequency'' for clarity, and is distinct from ''angular frequency''. Frequency is measured in hertz (Hz) which is eq ...
of an incoming radio signal
Radio waves are a type of electromagnetic radiation with the longest wavelengths in the electromagnetic spectrum, typically with frequencies of 300 gigahertz (GHz) and below. At 300 GHz, the corresponding wavelength is 1 mm (shor ...
. It is primarily used in radio receiver
In radio communications, a radio receiver, also known as a receiver, a wireless, or simply a radio, is an electronic device that receives radio waves and converts the information carried by them to a usable form. It is used with an antenna. Th ...
s to keep the receiver tuned to the frequency of the desired station.
In radio communication
Radio is the technology of signaling and communicating using radio waves. Radio waves are electromagnetic waves of frequency between 30 hertz (Hz) and 300 gigahertz (GHz). They are generated by an electronic device called a transmit ...
, AFC is needed because, after the bandpass
A band-pass filter or bandpass filter (BPF) is a device that passes frequencies within a certain range and rejects (attenuates) frequencies outside that range.
Description
In electronics and signal processing, a filter is usually a two-po ...
frequency of a receiver is tuned to the frequency of a transmitter
In electronics and telecommunications, a radio transmitter or just transmitter is an electronic device which produces radio waves with an antenna (radio), antenna. The transmitter itself generates a radio frequency alternating current, which i ...
, the two frequencies may drift apart, interrupting the reception. This can be caused by a poorly controlled transmitter frequency, but the most common cause is drift of the center bandpass frequency of the receiver, due to thermal or mechanical drift in the values of the electronic components.
Assuming that a receiver is nearly tuned to the desired frequency, the AFC circuit in the receiver develops an error voltage
Voltage, also known as electric pressure, electric tension, or (electric) potential difference, is the difference in electric potential between two points. In a static electric field, it corresponds to the work needed per unit of charge to m ...
proportional to the degree to which the receiver is mistuned. This error voltage is then fed back to the tuning circuit in such a way that the tuning error is reduced. In most frequency modulation
Frequency modulation (FM) is the encoding of information in a carrier wave by varying the instantaneous frequency of the wave. The technology is used in telecommunications, radio broadcasting, signal processing, and Run-length limited#FM: .280. ...
(FM) detectors, an error voltage of this type is easily available. See Negative feedback
Negative feedback (or balancing feedback) occurs when some function (Mathematics), function of the output of a system, process, or mechanism is feedback, fed back in a manner that tends to reduce the fluctuations in the output, whether caused by ...
.
AFC was mainly used in radios and television sets around the mid-20th century. In the 1970s, receivers began to be designed using frequency synthesizer
A frequency synthesizer is an electronic circuit that generates a range of frequencies from a single reference frequency. Frequency synthesizers are used in many modern devices such as radio receivers, televisions, mobile telephones, radioteleph ...
circuits, which synthesized the receiver's input frequency from a crystal oscillator
A crystal oscillator is an electronic oscillator circuit that uses a piezoelectric crystal as a frequency-selective element. The oscillator frequency is often used to keep track of time, as in quartz wristwatches, to provide a stable cloc ...
using the vibrations of an ultra-stable quartz crystal
Quartz is a hard, crystalline mineral composed of silica (silicon dioxide). The atoms are linked in a continuous framework of SiO4 silicon-oxygen tetrahedra, with each oxygen being shared between two tetrahedra, giving an overall chemical form ...
. These maintained sufficiently stable frequencies that AFCs were no longer needed.
See also
*Automatic gain control
Automatic gain control (AGC) is a closed-loop feedback regulating circuit in an amplifier or chain of amplifiers, the purpose of which is to maintain a suitable signal amplitude at its output, despite variation of the signal amplitude at the inpu ...
(AGC)
*Frequency drift
In electrical engineering, and particularly in telecommunications, frequency drift is an unintended and generally arbitrary offset of an oscillator from its nominal frequency. Causes may include component aging, changes in temperature that alter ...
*Phase-locked loop
A phase-locked loop or phase lock loop (PLL) is a control system that generates an output signal whose phase is related to the phase of an input signal. There are several different types; the simplest is an electronic circuit consisting of a ...
(PLL)
External links
Radar tutorial
Communication circuits Wireless tuning and filtering {{Electronics-stub