THERMISTOR MULTIVIBRATOR AS THE TEMPERATURE-TO-FREQUENCY CONVERTER AND AS A BRIDGE FOR TEMPERATURE MEASUREMENT.

A symmetrical multivibrator with one timing resistor replaced by a network consisting of a thermistor and passive resistors, is analyzed. The circuit represents at the same time a linear temperature-to-frequency converter and a multivibrator bridge (MB), both having the same linearity range with any thermistor network configuration. When the balance state is reached at an inflection point, the sensitivities of the converter and the bridge are the same. The MB has higher sensitivity than the Wheatstone bridge and can be balanced independently of the inflection point over a wide range. The converter and bridge performances with practical thermistor transducers are analyzed theoretically and numerically.