Oscillator Phase Noise: A 50-Year Review

Fifty years ago emerging requirements in oscillator applications led to the 1964 IEEE-NASA Symposium on Short-term Frequency Stability. Following that, IEEE Technical Committee 14.7 was established to unify time- and frequency-domain definitions of frequency stability. I had the good fortune to participate and contribute as a member of the symposium program committee and the IEEE committee. This paper is a personal retrospective of events that are said to have shaped our field: the 1964 Symposium, the 1966 Proc. IEEE special issue on frequency stability we edited (with comments on my oscillator-model paper), and our 1971 paper, “Characterization of Frequency Stability,” written as a basis for IEEE STD 1139.