PLL and injection locked PLL (ILPLL) operations of a push-pull self oscillating mixer (SOM)

This paper presents the experimental results of a push-pull Self-Oscillating Mixer (SOM) tunable in a range of 421-463 MHz operating in PLL and Injection Locked PLL (ILPLL) regimes. By careful selection of the oscillator feedback resistor, an excellent down-conversion gain of up to 24.3 dB is observed. As a result, for the first time, the phase detection is performed as part of the SOM without the need for an external phase detector and gain stages. Issues such as tuning voltage-frequency variation, SOM phase-frequency variation, tracking range, pull in range, phase noise, and SOM phase controllability are discussed in the paper.