Ultra-low Phase Noise Reconfigurable LO Generation for Block Up Converters

This paper describes the detailed design of a Low Phase Noise Local Oscillator Signal Generation for Block Up Converters. This paper uses a single chip integrated PLL and VCO (PLL/VCO) based synthesizer for generating the LO signal for BUCs which helps in reducing the size and part count, thereby enhancing the reliability. This will also ease the generation of different LO signals with minimal hardware and program changes for different frequency band BUCs. In addition, this paper describes the detection and monitoring circuit used to realize an infallible LO frequency generation circuit. This paper also provides insight on LO frequency generation using external or internal reference signal (auto/manually selected). The paper talks about continuous monitoring of the lock status of the Synthesizer which is auto locked in case of unlock and the analog sample of the LO which can be tapped to check the spectral purity of signal before mixing.