Low jitter silicon bipolar based VCOs for applications in high speed optical communication systems

This paper describes the design of silicon bipolar-based planar microstrip low noise VCO at 10 GHz. Using this VCO with GaAs PHEMT MMIC frequency multipliers, 20 GHz and 40 GHz VCOs are reported. Applications include OC-192 and OC-768 optical communication systems. Demonstrated phase noise of -113 dBc/Hz@100 KHz represents the best phase noise of a 10 GHz microstrip VCO reported to date.