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Duty cycle
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Duty cyle is a widely used term in electronics and power indicating a period of use.
In telecommunication and electronics, the term duty cycle has the following meanings:
Duty cycle is the proportion of time during which a component, device, or system is operated. Suppose a disk drive operates for 1 second, and is shut off for 99 seconds, then is run for 1 second again, and so on. The drive runs for one out of 100 seconds, or 1/100 of the time, and its duty cycle is therefore 1/100, or 1 percent.
In a periodic phenomenon, the ratio of the duration of the phenomenon in a given period to the period.
- duty cycle
where
- D is the so-called duty cycle;
- τ is the duration that the function is non-zero;
- Τ is the period of the function.
For example, in an ideal pulse train (one having rectangular pulses), the duty cycle is the pulse duration divided by the pulse period. For a pulse train in which the pulse duration is 1 μs and the pulse period is 4 μs, the duty cycle is 0.25. The duty cycle of a square wave is 0.5, or 50%.
In a continuously variable slope delta (CVSD) modulation converter, the mean proportion of binary "1" digits at the converter output in which each "1" indicates a run of a specified number of consecutive bits of the same polarity in the digital output signal.
Some music synthesizers vary the duty cycle of their audio-frequency oscillators to obtain a subtle effect on the tone colors. This technique is known as Pulse-width modulation (PWM.)
In tools/equipment such as welders, the duty cycle is defined as the percentage of time in a 10 minute period that it can be operated continously before overheating [1].
This article contains material from the Federal Standard 1037C (in support of MIL-STD-188), which, as a work of the United States Government, is in the public domain.