FULL NONLINEAR-ANALYSIS OF NEAR-CARRIER NOISE IN DISCRIMINATOR-STABILIZED MICROWAVE-OSCILLATORS

The Letter demonstrates the application of modern nonlinear CAD techniques based on the harmonic-balance method to the computation of near-carrier noise in microwave oscillators stabilized by a discriminator-based feedback loop. Oscillator noise is described as being generated by two basic mechanisms: a fundamental-frequency jitter due to noise-induced frequency modulation of the carrier, and a phase jitter due to the superposition on the carrier of upper and lower noise sidebands generated by frequency conversion in the nonlinear devices. The numerical analysis is fully general purpose and can be applied to oscillator topologies of arbitrary complexity in a straightforward way. The simulation technique is applied to an ultra-low-noise discriminator-stabilized dielectric-resonator oscillator, and is shown to exactly predict the measured noise performance of the real circuit. (C) 1993 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.