In electrical engineering, and particularly in telecommunications, frequency drift is an unintended and generally arbitrary offset of an oscillator from its nominal frequency. This can be caused by changes in temperature, which can alter the piezoelectric effect in a quartz crystal, or by problems with a voltage regulator which controls the bias voltage to the oscillator. Electrical Engineers design power systems… … and complex electronic circuits. ... Telecommunication involves the transmission of signals over a distance for the purpose of communication. ... Choices and actions are considered to be arbitrary when they are done not by means of any underlying principle or logic, but by whim or some decidedly illogical formula. ... In computer science, an offset within an array or other data structure object is an integer indicating the distance (displacement) from the beginning of the object up until a given element or point, presumably within the same object. ... Oscillation is the periodic variation, typically in time, of some measure as seen, for example, in a swinging pendulum. ... A nominal is a word or a group of words that functions as a noun, i. ... FreQuency is a music video game developed by Harmonix and published by SCEI. It was released in November 2001. ... Fig. ... Piezoelectricity is the ability of certain crystals to produce a voltage when subjected to mechanical stress. ... Quartz is one of the most common minerals in the Earths continental crust. ... Quartz crystal Synthetic bismuth crystal Insulin crystals Gallium, a metal that easily forms large single crystals A huge monocrystal of potassium dihydrogen phosphate grown from solution by Saint-Gobain for the megajoule laser of CEA. In chemistry and mineralogy, a crystal is a solid in which the constituent atoms, molecules... A voltage regulator is an electrical regulator designed to automatically maintain a constant voltage level. ... In electronics, voltage bias (sometimes simply called bias) is a steady-state voltage inserted in series with an element of an electronic device like a transistor, coil or other source of load. ...

On a radio transmitter, frequency drift can cause a radio station to drift into an adjacent channel, causing illegal interference. Because of this, there are usually regulations specifying what kind of tolerance such oscillators must have, in order to be in a device which will be type-accepted. A temperature-compensated, voltage-controlled crystal oscillator (TCVCXO) is normally used for FM. Antenna tower of Crystal Palace transmitter, London A transmitter (sometimes abbreviated XMTR) is an electronic device which with the aid of an antenna propagates an electromagnetic signal such as radio, television, or other telecommunications. ... A radio station is an audio (sound) broadcasting service, traditionally broadcast through the air as radio waves (a form of electromagnetic radiation) from a transmitter to an antenna and a thus to a receiving device. ... In broadcasting an adjacent channel is an AM, FM, or TV channel that is next to another channel. ... Interference of two circular waves - Wavelength (decreasing bottom to top) and Wave centers distance (increasing to the right). ... Tolerance in Final Fantasy is an allowance, given as a permissible range, in the nominal dimension or value specification of a manufactured object. ... In engineering, compensation is planning for side effects or other unintended issues in a design. ... The abbreviations FM, Fm, and fm may refer to: Electrical engineering Frequency modulation (FM) and its most common applications: FM broadcasting, used primarily to broadcast music and speech at VHF frequencies FM synthesis, a sound-generation technique popularized by early digital synthesizers Science Femtometre (fm), an SI measure of length...

On the receiver side, frequency drift was mainly a problem in early tuners, particularly for analog dial tuning, and especially on FM, which exhibits a capture effect. However, the invention of the phase-locked loop (PLL) essentially eliminates the drift issue. For transmitters, a numerically-controlled oscillator (NCO) also does not have problems with drift. The word receiver has a number of different meanings: In communications and information processing, a receiver is the recipient (observer) of a message (information), which is sent from a source (object). ... A tuner is a device to adjust the resonant frequency of an antenna or transmission line to work most efficiently at one frequency or band of frequencies. ... An analog or analogue signal is an allergy continuous in both time and amplitude. ... A dial is a generally a flat disk, often with numbers or similar markings on it, used for displaying the setting or output of a timepiece, radio or measuring instrument In telephony and telecommunications in connection with a telephone, a dial refers, in older telephones, to a rotating disk with... In music, tuning is the process of producing or preparing to produce a certain pitch in relation to another, usually at the unison but often at some other interval. ... In telecommunication, a capture effect is a phenomenon, associated with FM reception, in which only the stronger of two signals at or near the same frequency will be demodulated. ... An invention is an object, process, or technique which displays an element of novelty. ... In electronics, a phase-locked loop (PLL) is a closed-loop feedback control system that generates and outputs a signal in relation to the frequency and phase of an input (reference) signal. ... It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with Direct digital synthesis. ...

It should be noted that this differs from Doppler shift, which is a perceived difference in frequency, even though the source is still producing the same wavelength, because the source is moving. It also differs from frequency deviation, which is the inherent and necessary result of modulation in both FM and phase modulation. The Doppler effect is the apparent change in frequency or wavelength of a wave that is perceived by an observer moving relative to the source of the waves. ... The wavelength is the distance between repeating units of a wave pattern. ... In telecommunication, the term frequency deviation has the following meanings: The amount by which a frequency differs from a prescribed value, such as the amount an oscillator frequency drifts from its nominal frequency. ... In telecommunications, modulation is the process of varying a periodic waveform, i. ... Phase modulation (PM) is a form of modulation which represents information as variations in the instantaneous phase of a carrier wave. ...