Oscillators are very important components of any electronic system, be it in communications, signal processing, data acquisition or power electronics. In short, one always bumps up against oscillators in electronic design. Among other things that an engineer faces when designing oscillators or VCOs is the problem of ever present noise. It becomes important to understand the basics of noise sources and quantities in oscillators. Recently Signal Processing Group Inc., released an interesting paper on just this very subject. The paper may be accessed from the SPG website at http://www.signalpro.biz under the engineer’s corner menu item.