Editing Electronic oscillator (section)

===Design procedure===
Since oscillators depend on nonlinearity for their operation, the usual linear [[frequency domain]] circuit analysis techniques used for amplifiers based on the [[Laplace transform]], such as [[root locus]] and gain and phase plots ([[Bode plot]]s), cannot capture their full behavior.<ref name="Stephan2" />  To determine startup and transient behavior and calculate the detailed shape of the output waveform, [[electronic circuit simulation]] computer programs like [[SPICE]] are used.<ref name="Stephan2" />  A typical design procedure for oscillator circuits is to use linear techniques such as the [[Barkhausen stability criterion]] or [[Nyquist stability criterion]] to design the circuit, use a rule of thumb to choose the loop gain, then simulate the circuit on computer to make sure it starts up reliably and to determine the nonlinear aspects of operation such as harmonic distortion.<ref name="Schubert" /><ref name="Stephan2" />  Component values are tweaked until the simulation results are satisfactory.  The distorted oscillations of real-world (nonlinear) oscillators are called [[limit cycle]]s and are studied in [[nonlinear control theory]].