A Low Phase Noise Microwave Sapphire Loop Oscillator

Author

Green, D. ; McNeilage, C. ; Searls, J.H.

Author_Institution

Poseidon Sci. Instrum. Pty. Ltd., Fremantle, WA

fYear

2006

fDate

38869

Firstpage

852

Lastpage

860

Abstract

A tuneable 10.24 GHz microwave oscillator based on a sapphire-loaded cavity (SLQ resonator operating in a "whispering gallery"-mode has been built. Extremely low phase noise of -130 dBc/Hz @ 1 kHz and -179 dBc/Hz floor has been measured, without the need for any form of noise reduction. This level of performance is made possible by the high Q factor of the SLC resonator, together with the low phase noise of a commercially-available sustaining amplifier based on a parallel combination of heterojunction bipolar transistors (HBTs). This paper presents the results for the performance of this low phase noise, sapphire resonator based loop (SLOOP) oscillator. The SLOOP has an SLC resonator with a significantly improved start-up time over previous sapphire-based resonators, coming to temperature lock within 2 minutes over the operating temperature range 0 to +55degC

Keywords

aluminium compounds; amplifiers; crystal oscillators; heterojunction bipolar transistors; microwave oscillators; oscillators; tuning; whispering gallery modes; 0 to 55 C; 10.24 GHz; 2 min; Al₂O₃; HBT; heterojunction bipolar transistors; high Q factor; low phase noise oscillator; sapphire loop oscillator; sapphire resonator loop oscillator; sapphire-loaded cavity; tuneable microwave oscillator; whispering gallery; Low-noise amplifiers; Microwave oscillators; Noise measurement; Noise reduction; Phase measurement; Phase noise; Phase shifters; Power amplifiers; Power measurement; Temperature distribution;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

International Frequency Control Symposium and Exposition, 2006 IEEE

Conference_Location

Miami, FL

Print_ISBN

1-4244-0074-0

Electronic_ISBN

1-4244-0074-0

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/FREQ.2006.275501

Filename

4053879