Publications
Stable local oscillator microcircuit
This report gives a description of the development of a Stable Local Oscillator (StaLO) Microcircuit. The StaLO accepts a 100MHz input signal and produces output signals at 1.2, 3.3, and 3.6 GHz. The circuit is built as a multi-chip module (MCM), since it makes use of integrated circuit technologies in silicon and lithium niobate as well as discrete passive components. The StaLO uses a comb generator followed by surface acoustic wave (SAW) filters. The comb generator creates a set of harmonic components of the 100MHz input signal. The SAW filters are narrow bandpass filters that are used to select the desired component and reject all others. The resulting circuit has very low sideband power levels and low phase noise (both less than -40dBc) that is limited primarily by the phase noise level of the input signal.