New Microwave-Frequency Synthesizers that Exhibit Broader Bandwidths and Increased Spectral Purity

A superior microwave-frequency synthesis technique is treated in this paper, emphasizing improved spectral purity with octave bandwidths in the microwave region. The microwave-frequency synthesizer is discussed in two sections each corresponding to a system unit. The driver unit specifications are analyzed in the first section, showing its voltage-controlled crystal oscillator (VCXO) L(f ) output to be -130 dBc/Hz at 10 kHz. In the second section, the driver VCXO output is translated in the microwave unit to the final X-band frequency by means of a phase-locked loop. An analysis of this phase-locked loop, as described in this paper, shows the final L(f ) equal to -101 dBc/Hz at 10 kHz. Since a worst case situation was assumed, the final L(f ) is quite superior for octave bandwidth microwave-frequency synthesizers.