11-bit digital frequency discriminator for the P/L band

This article refers to high resolution digital frequency discriminators DFDs. An interesting structure of the microwave phase discriminator MPD was described. It has been built in microstrip technique onto single substrate. The power splitting network was equipped with additional wideband phase shifter. It was done in order to shape DFD characteristics. Thanks to design of each of the discriminator's microwave components and carefully worked out evaluation algorithm, an 11-bit frequency resolution was achieved. The accuracy of the manufactured discriminator is better than /spl plusmn/0.6 MHz over the frequency range of 0.76-1.27 GHz.