The miracle circuit

Brad Thompson - October 01, 2002

Suppose someone offered you a circuit that demodulates microvolt-level AM, FM, and pulsemodulated signals from darn near DC to daylight. The circuit also will "capture" the stronger of two
incoming signals within its bandwidth. Best of all, you can build the circuit around a single active
device, and it consumes microwatts.
Interested? Such a design has existed since before the Great Depression. Major Edwin H.
Armstrong, the genius who invented the regenerative detector, the superheterodyne, and the FM
radio, described the superregenerative detector in 1922.
Here's how to build a superregenerative circuit: Use any active device that oscillates at the
frequency of interest. Apply a periodic "quench" voltage or current that stops the oscillator and
gradually allows the oscillations to restart.
As the oscillator attempts to restart, the circuit's feedback teeters on the edge of signal-frequency
oscillation. Internal noise within the oscillator will tip the balance and randomly initiate oscillation.
An incoming signal will start the process earlier in the restart phase and alter the oscillator's current
drain. You recover the incoming signal's modulation by filtering the oscillator's average current
drain.
In a superregen circuit designed around a single active device, every parameter affects every other
parameter. Two nonlinear and interacting oscillators amount to an analytical headache that will
probably break any circuit-simulation package.
But there's no free lunch. Unless you carefully shield a superregen circuit and equip it with an
isolation amplifier, it can radiate broadband noise through its antenna. Also, the superregen's
tendency to capture the strongest signal limits its applications in crowded portions of the spectrum.
Superregen circuits saw service before and during World War II in communications and IFF
(Identification, friend or foe) radar receivers. After World War II, the first publicly licensed two-way
radio systems used superregen receivers. Also, NMR (nuclear-magnetic resonance) instruments
featured superregen detectors.
But the superregen must be obsolete today, right? Not at allopen the case of a garage-door opener
or a remote-control automobile-lock receiver, and chances are, there's a superregen receiver inside.
Modern superregen receiversbuilt around MMIC front-end amplifiers and SAW (surface-acoustic
wave) filtersminimize radiation and offer narrow bandwidth with good adjacent-channel immunity.
Where does the superregen fit into modern test instrumentation? Probably as a measurement target
and not as an instrument component, but you might have an application awaiting a small, cheap, and
sensitive circuit. After all, tough economic times call for ingenuity and thrift.

Contact Brad Thompson at brad@tmworld.com