Oven Controlled Crystal Oscillators, are known to provide a stable frequency oscillation across a wide range of operating temperatures. They do this by heating the oven in which the crystal oscillators are placed, so that temperature variations in the environment outside the oven have less of an effect on the oscillation frequency.

The time-period taken by an oven to warm up and reach its ideal operating temperature is known as Warm-up Time. An OCXO is considered to provide a stable oscillation frequency after the warm-up time.

Warm-up time depends on following factors:

• Power available
• Size of the oven
• Insulation quality
• Ambient temperature

Typical warm-up times are from 15 seconds to 5 minutes.