In engineering, compensation is planning for side effects or other unintended issues in a design. The design of an invention can itself also be to compensate for some other existing issue or exception. One example is in a voltage-controlled crystal oscillator (VCXO), which is normally affected not only by voltage, but to a lesser extent by temperature. A temperature-compensated version (a TCVCXO) is designed so that heat buildup within the enclosure of a transmitter or other such device will not alter the piezoelectric effect, thereby causing frequency drift. Another example is motion compensation on digital cameras and video cameras, which keep a picture steady and not blurry.
