The design of low noise oscillators

The Design of Low Noise Oscillators offers a new time-variant phase noise model. By discarding the implicit assumption of time-invariance underlying many other approaches, this model is capable of making quantitative predictions of the phase noise and jitter of different types of oscillators. It is able to attribute a definite amount of phase noise to every noise source in the circuit.

Because of its time-variant nature, the model also takes into account the effect of cyclostationary noise sources in a natural way. It details the precise mechanism by which low frequency noise, such as l/f noise, upconverts into close-in phase noise. An important new understanding is that rise and fall time symmetry controls such upconversion.

More important, it suggests practical methods for suppressing this upconversion, so that good oscillators can be built in technologies with notoriously poor l/f noise performance (such as CMOS or GaAs MESFET). The Design of Low Noise Oscillators will be of interest to both analog and digital circuit design as well as RF circuit designers.