Presenting a comprehensive account of oscillator phase noise and frequency stability, this practical text is both mathematically rigorous and accessible. An in-depth treatment of the noise mechanism is given, describing the oscillator as a physical system, and showing that simple general laws govern the stability of a large variety of oscillators differing in technology and frequency range. Inevitably, special attention is given to amplifiers, resonators, delay lines, feedback, and flicker (1/f) noise. The reverse engineering of oscillators based on phase-noise spectra is also covered, and end-of-chapter exercises are given. Uniquely, numerous practical examples are presented, including case studies taken from laboratory prototypes and commercial oscillators, which allow the oscillator internal design to be understood by analyzing its phase-noise spectrum. Based on tutorials given by the author at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, international IEEE meetings, and in industry, this is a useful reference for academic researchers, industry practitioners, and graduate students in RF engineering and communications engineering.Additional materials are available via www.cambridge.org/rubiola.

We introduce a stochastic model for the determination of phase noise in optoelectronic oscillators. After a short overview of the main results for the phase diffusion approach in autonomous oscillators, an extension is proposed for the case of optoelectronic oscillators where the microwave is a limit-cycle originated from a bifurcation induced by nonlinearity and time-delay. This Langevin approach based on stochastic calculus is also successfully confronted with experimental measurements.

A photonic-delay line is used as a frequency discriminator for measurement of the phase noise-hence the short-term frequency stability-of microwave oscillators. The scheme is suitable for electronic and photonic oscillators, including the optoelectronic oscillator, mode lock lasers, and other types of rf and microwave pulsed optical sources. The approach is inherently suitable for a wide range of frequency without reconfiguration, which is important for the measurement of tunable oscillators. It is also insensitive to a moderate frequency drift without the need for phase locking.

Understanding the amplifier phase noise is a critical issue in numerous fields of engineering and physics, like oscillators, frequency synthesis, telecommunications, radars, and spectroscopy; in the emerging domain of microwave photonics; and in more exotic fields like radio astronomy, particle accelerators, etc.This article analyzes the two main types of phase noise in amplifiers, white and flicker. So, the power spectral density of the random phase ϕ(t) is Sϕ(f ) = b0 + b−1/f . White phase noise results from adding white noise to the RF spectrum in the carrier region. For a given RF noise level, b0 is proportional to the inverse of the carrier power P0. By contrast, b−1 is a parameter of the amplifier, constant in a wide range of P0. The consequences are the following. Connecting m equal amplifiers in parallel, b−1 is 1/m times that of one device. Cascading m equal amplifiers, b−1 is m times that of one amplifier. Recirculating the signal in an amplifier so that the gain increases by a power of m (a factor of m in dB) due to positive feedback (regeneration), we find that b−1 is m 2 times that of the amplifier alone. The feedforward amplifier exhibits extremely low b−1 thanks to the fact that the carrier is ideally nulled at the input of its internal error amplifier.Starting from the fact that near-dc flicker exists in all electronic devices, even if generally not accessible from outside, the simplest model for phase flickering is that the near-dc 1/f noise modulates the carrier through some parametric effect in the semiconductor. This model predicts the behavior of the (simple) amplifier and of the different amplifier topologies. Numerous measurements on amplifiers from different technologies, also including some old samples, and in a wide frequency range (HF to microwaves), validate the theory. In turn, our results provide design guidelines and suggestions for improved CAD simulations.