Rectangular waveguide compatible NRD guide gunn oscillator with medium power and low phase noise at 60 GHz

A 60-GHz frequency-stabilized small oscillator consisting of a Gunn diode, a circulator, and a matched termination is fabricated by using NRD guides. The emphasis in this paper is adaptability to a rectangular waveguide circuit. To this end, an NRD guide–waveguide transition is designed. In the 60-GHz NRD Gunn diode oscillators to date, Gunn diodes sealed in a package dedicated to the NRD guide have been placed on special order. With a view to cost reduction, a Gunn diode mount is conceived in which a general-purpose-type Gunn diode can be used. The oscillation output of the fabricated oscillator is 13 dBm and the phase noise at 300 kHz offset is −113 dBc/Hz. Further, the frequency variation due to ambient temperature change is −1.3 ppm/°C so that the fabricated millimeter-wave oscillator is highly stable, with medium power output and low noise. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Electron Comm Jpn Pt 2, 90(3): 26–32, 2007; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/ecjb.20290