Question

An oscillator is nothing but an amplifier with ____________.

Answer 1

Amplifier

1. It is an electronic device that increases the power of a time-varying voltage or current signal.
2. It is an electronic circuit with two ports that uses electric power from the power supply to increase the amplitude of the signal across its input terminals, thus producing a greater amplitude signal as output.

Oscillator

1. It is a device that works on the principle of oscillation.
2. It produces continuous, repeated, alternating waveforms without any input.
3. When the amplifier connects with positive feedback, it acts as the oscillator.
4. The feedback employed here is positive feedback, this means some amount of the output voltage is given to the input.
5. Hence the circuit continues its process without any input to the oscillator.
6. The positive feedback is also known as regenerative feedback because the system sustains or regenerates itself without any input source.
7. Hence the oscillator is nothing but an amplifier with the positive feedback.

The figure shows an amplifier with positive feedback, i.e., an oscillator.

An oscillator is nothing but an amplifier with positive feedback.