Enhanced phase detector using nonlinear transmission lines

Phase detectors are essential for phase-locked loops, synthesizing stable micro- and millimeter-wave frequencies, and measuring phase noise. We present a phase detector setup built around a self-sampling nonlinear transmission line transient generator integrated circuit that trades capture range for high phase sensitivity, observing 4.4 V/rad at 9 GHz. This phase detector constant could be doubled by trivially reducing the on-chip attenuation and utilizing the full range of the on-chip sampler.