A low phase noise and frequency agility synthesizer for millimeter-wave transceiver

With the increasing demand of millimeter-wave (MMW) communication, the performance of its frequency synthesizer has high requirements. In this paper, a multiple conversion mechanism, which used hybrid frequency synthesis technique is presented. Some key modules include linear frequency-modulated generator, agile, and low phase noise local oscillators (LOs), automatic gain control, receiver front-end circuit, and MMW LO circuits are discussed and simulated to verify correctness of the mechanism. The experimental results show that, spurious is better than −65 dBc, phase noise is no more than −80 dBc/Hz@1 kHz, and the maximum frequency-hopping time is <1.8µs.