Comb generator

A comb generator is a signal generator that produces multiple harmonics of its input signal. The appearance of the output at the spectrum analyzer screen, resembling teeth of a comb, gave the device its name.

Comb generators find wide range of uses in microwave technology. E.g., synchronous signals in wide frequency bandwidth can be produced by a comb generator. The most common use is in broadband frequency synthesizers, where the high frequency signals act as stable references correlated to the lower energy references; the outputs can be used directly, or to synchronize phase-locked loop oscillators. It may be also used to generate a complete set of substitution channels for testing, each of which carries the same baseband audio and video signal.