Microwave oscillators incorporating cryogenic sapphire dielectric resonators

Progress is reported on efforts to develop a commercially-viable high purity X-band signal source incorporating a cryogenic sapphire dielectric resonator. The resonator design is of the whispering gallery type to take advantage of the excellent electromagnetic field confinement offered by this geometry. Complications resulting from the high spurious mode density of this type of resonator have been eliminated by developing a very accurate and complete mode analysis program which fully incorporates the dielectric anisotropies of the sapphire ring. This program allows the design of a window in the frequency domain where no unwanted modes exist, with accurate placement of the desired mode at the center of this region. Preliminary evaluation of the phase noise properties of simple oscillators incorporating these resonators have been performed. For example, in a dual-oscillator comparison of two oscillators operating near 13 GHz phase noise values of L(f)=-55 dBc/Hz, -145 dBc/Hz and -161 dBc/Hz were obtained for offset frequencies of 1 Hz, 1 kHz and 10 kHz, respectively.<
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