Hawaslsh
Full Member level 3
- Joined
- Mar 13, 2015
- Messages
- 164
- Helped
- 5
- Reputation
- 10
- Reaction score
- 7
- Trophy points
- 1,298
- Location
- Washington DC, USA
- Activity points
- 3,422
Hello all,
Im working with a system that requires a 23.8 - 26.8 GHz VCO (HMC739LP4). During lab testing, to maintain stability I setup a phased locked loop using the divide by 16 output on the VCO, a HP frequency synthesizer as the reference, and a mini-circuits double balanced mixer as the phase detector.
This setup works great, but when I move towards the final product design, I will have to create my own stable reference ~1.45 - 1.6 GHz and move away from using a bench-top synthesizer. What are some of the common methods to create such a stable "tune-able" reference? Is this something a DDS or good DAC can accomplish? Or would it have to be more hardware based (like a crystal) to maintain true stability?
Thanks in advance,
Sami
Im working with a system that requires a 23.8 - 26.8 GHz VCO (HMC739LP4). During lab testing, to maintain stability I setup a phased locked loop using the divide by 16 output on the VCO, a HP frequency synthesizer as the reference, and a mini-circuits double balanced mixer as the phase detector.
This setup works great, but when I move towards the final product design, I will have to create my own stable reference ~1.45 - 1.6 GHz and move away from using a bench-top synthesizer. What are some of the common methods to create such a stable "tune-able" reference? Is this something a DDS or good DAC can accomplish? Or would it have to be more hardware based (like a crystal) to maintain true stability?
Thanks in advance,
Sami