Phase-shift cell and a phase shifter for the application of said cell

Claim 1

An aperiodic generator of polyphase pulse signals having n-1 phases comprising: n-1 chain-connected phase-shift cells of which the first cell is synchronized by a single phase input pulse signal of minimum repetition period T to be converted to a polyphase pulse signal and the following cells are each synchronized by the output signal of the preceding cells; a phase-synthesizing logic circuit having n outputs and having connections to the outputs of each of said phase shift cells and arranged to produce n-1 outputs having the same repetition period as the input signal; each of said phase shift cells comprising: a constant current generator having two constant current output states, the direction of output current in one of said states being opposite to that in the other of said states; an integrator having as its input the output of said constant current generator; a bistable threshold circuit arranged to go from a first state to a second state when the output of said integrator attains a predetermined threshold level of said bistable threshold circuit and to go from its second state to its first state in response to input impulses, said bistable circuit being connected to switch said generator correspondingly between its output states; and means for deriving phase shifted output synchronizing signals from the transitions of said bistable threshold circuit from said first state to said second state; and means for supplying to at least one of said cells a current additional to the output of the constant current generator thereof for controlling the amount of phase shift produced thereby; said phase shift cells being arranged so that the aggregate phase shift produced by the last of said phase shift cells for the maximum phase shift setting of said phase shift controlling means is less than said period T, so that the incremental phase shifts produced by the respective cells correspond to a polyphase distribution within the period T.