1.5-GHz voltage controlled oscillator with 3% tuning bandwidth using a two-pole DSBAR filter

Ivan Avramov; Stephen R Gilbert; Rich Ruby

doi:10.1109/TUFFC.2011.1892

1.5-GHz voltage controlled oscillator with 3% tuning bandwidth using a two-pole DSBAR filter

IEEE Trans Ultrason Ferroelectr Freq Control. 2011 May;58(5):916-23. doi: 10.1109/TUFFC.2011.1892.

Authors

Ivan Avramov¹, Stephen R Gilbert, Rich Ruby

Affiliation

¹ Georgy Nadjakov Institute of Solid-State Physics, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Sofia, Bulgaria. iavramov@pronto.phys.bas.bg

PMID: 21622047
DOI: 10.1109/TUFFC.2011.1892

Abstract

First results on a novel voltage controlled oscillator (VCO) in the lower gigahertz range, featuring excellent phase noise and high power efficiency are presented. The heart of the VCO is a recently reported novel miniature two-pole decoupled stacked bulk acoustic resonator (DSBAR) filter. With its single 180° phase transition over the 1 dB bandwidth, linear phase, and maximum 1 dB insertion loss, it provides stable single-mode operation over 45 MHz (≈3%) of tuning bandwidth and has negligible heat dissipation when operated at incident power levels of 100 mW or greater. The 1.55-GHz laboratory VCO prototypes operate at 5 V supply voltage, 50 mA supply current, 15 dBm of output power, and >13% efficiency, demonstrating -84 and < -180 dBc/Hz phase noise suppression at 1 kHz carrier offset and in the thermal noise region, respectively. VCOs with cascaded DSBAR filters for further phase noise reduction are also demonstrated.