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Phase noise in oscillators: a unifying theory and numerical methods for characterisation

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Published:01 May 1998Publication History

ABSTRACT

Phase noise is a topic of theoretical and practical interest in electronic circuits, as well as in other fields such as optics. Although progress has been made in understanding the phenomenon, there still remain significant gaps, both in its fundamental theory and in numerical techniques for its characterisation. In this paper, we develop a solid foundation for phase noise that is valid for any oscillator, regardless of operating mechanism. We establish novel results about the dynamics of stable nonlinear oscillators in the presence of perturbations, both deterministic and random. We obtain an exact, nonlinear equation for phase error, which we solve without approximations for random perturbations. This leads us to a precise characterisation of timing jitter and spectral dispersion, for computing which we develop efficient numerical methods. We demonstrate our techniques on practical electrical oscillators, and obtain good matches with measurements even at frequencies close to the carrier, where previous techniques break down.

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          cover image ACM Conferences
          DAC '98: Proceedings of the 35th annual Design Automation Conference
          May 1998
          820 pages
          ISBN:0897919645
          DOI:10.1145/277044

          Copyright © 1998 ACM

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          • Published: 1 May 1998

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