High-Spectral-Purity Microwave Oscillator: Design Using Conventional Air-Dielectric Cavity

Published

January 1, 2003

Author(s)

A Sen Gupta, David A. Howe, Craig Nelson, Archita Hati, F L. Walls, J F. Garcia nava

Abstract

We report exceptionally low PM and AM noise levels from a microwave oscillator that uses a conventional air-dielectric cavity resonator as a frequency discriminator. Our approach is to increase the discriminator's intrinsic signal-to-noise ratio by use of a high-power carrier signal to interrogate an optimally coupled cavity, while the high-level of the carrier is suppressed before the phase detector. We developed and tested an accurate model of the expected PM noise that indicates, among other things, that a conventional air-dielectric resonator of moderate Q will exhibit less discriminator noise in this approach than do more esoteric and expensive dielectric resonators tuned to a high-order, high-Q mode and driven at the dielectric's optimum power.

Proceedings Title

2003 Joint Mtg. IEEE Intl. Freq. Cont. Symp. and EFTF Conf

Conference Dates

May 4-8, 2003

Conference Location

Tampa, FL, US

Conference Title

Proc. 2003 Joint Mtg. IEEE Intl. Freq. Cont. Symp. and EFTF Conf.

Pub Type

Conferences

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Citation

Sen Gupta, A. , Howe, D. , Nelson, C. , Hati, A. , Walls, F. and Garcia nava, J. (2003), High-Spectral-Purity Microwave Oscillator: Design Using Conventional Air-Dielectric Cavity, 2003 Joint Mtg. IEEE Intl. Freq. Cont. Symp. and EFTF Conf , Tampa, FL, US, [online], https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=105555 (Accessed October 10, 2025)