A low cost oscillator for high data rate E-band transceivers

Abstract

This paper proposes an oscillator design capable of achieving high data transmission rates of up to 1.5 Gbps with a modulation scheme of 256 QAM at E-band frequencies. A low phase noise oscillator and high quality factor resonator are implemented in this work. The proposed cavity resonator design is embedded in a low cost gold plated brass casing. Eigenmode simulations yield an unloaded quality factor in excess of 5800 at 20 GHz. The low phase noise oscillator comprises of commercially available and low cost components surface mounted on a low loss millimeter-wave substrate. The proposed 20 GHz oscillator makes use of a frequency doubler to drive a sub-harmonically pumped mixer aimed for E-band frequencies of 80 GHz. The expected phase noise of the oscillator is better than −103 dbc/Hz with 100 kHz offset while operating at 80 GHz.