A solid-mounted resonator-oscillator-based 4.596 GHz frequency synthesis

Abstract

This paper describes a 4.596 GHz frequency synthesis based on a 2.1 GHz solid mounted resonator (SMR) voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO). The SMR oscillator presents a chip size lower than 2 mm(2), a power consumption of 18.2 mW, and exhibits a phase noise of -89 dBc/Hz and -131 dBc/Hz at 2 kHz and 100 kHz offset frequencies, respectively. The VCO temperature-frequency dependence is measured to be -14 ppm∕°C over a range of -20°C to 60°C. From this source, a low noise frequency synthesizer is developed to generate a 4.596 GHz signal (half of the Cs atom hyperfine transition frequency) with a phase noise of -81 dBc/Hz and -120 dBc/Hz at 2 kHz and 100 kHz from the carrier. The frequency synthesis output is used as a local oscillator in a Cs vapor microcell-based compact atomic clock. Preliminary results are reported and discussed. To the authors knowledge, this is the first development of a SMR-oscillator-based frequency synthesizer for miniature atomic clocks applications.

A high-overtone bulk acoustic wave resonator-oscillator-based 4.596 GHz frequency source: Application to a coherent population trapping Cs vapor cell atomic clock

“…When locked to the atomic transition frequency, the HBAR-source exhibits a fractional frequency stability of 6.6 × 10 −11 τ −1/2 up to 5 s, limited by the signal-tonoise ratio of the CPT signal. This measured short-term frequency stability, better than those reported in 17,33 , is for τ up to 100 s well below the typical short-term stability specification of 6 × 10 −10 τ −1/2 required in miniature atomic clocks. After 5 s, the clock frequency stability was found to be limited by laser power effects.…”

A 4.596 GHz frequency synthesis based on a solid-mounted resonator

“…The SMR-VCO-based frequency synthesis is used as a local oscillator in a compact CPT atomic clock described in [11]. The CPT resonance was successfully detected.…”

“…The description of the 4.596 GHz frequency synthesis based on the 2.1 GHz SMR VCO is described in [11]. The generation of the 4.596 GHz signal is realized by first frequency-doubling the VCO frequency at 4.2 GHz.…”

“…The Q-factor of the parallel resonance frequency f p is 502 at 2.125GHz. The VCO is based on a common-base configuration architecture [11]. The active circuit is a SiGe:C heterojunction bipolar transistor (HBT) using BiCMOS7RF 0.25μm technology processes from ST Microelectronics.…”

Detection of cardiac biomarkers in serum using a micro-electromechanical film electroacoustic resonator

“…Their sensitivity can hardly meet the need of the detection of h-FABP because the molecular weight of the FABP is great lower than other cardiac biomarkers. Recently, MEMS film electroacoustic resonators, such as film bulk acoustic resonator (FBAR) [20,21] and solid mounted resonator (SMR) [22][23][24], are developed as an alternative of QCM devices. The use of piezoelectric film provides a small device size in micron scale, a high working frequency up to several gigahertz.…”