Surface acoustic wave microwave oscillator and frequency synthesizer

A synthesizer design which, when packaged, provides a significant reduction in size, weight and power consumption as compared with current direct synthesis techniques was developed. The hardware implementation highlighted surface acoustic wave (SAW) device applications specifically geared toward addressing performance parameters such as switching speed, frequency step size, and total achievable bandwidth, as well as maximum suppression of spurious modes. Surface acoustic wave devices were incorporated as oscillators and delay lines/filters, together with monolithic large scale integrated circuits which work at RF frequencies (RF-LSI) as an iterative mix and divide architecture. A brassboard synthesizer fabricated and delivered. The brassboard unit is fully operational and was tested in order to characterize typical unit performance capabilities. The delivered synthesizer demonstrated outstanding switching speed, settling in less than 25 ns and provided an output whose phase noise was measured within the specified requirements, as measured to within 2 MHz of the carrier at an output frequency of 1308 MHz. Output spectral flatness was obtainable to within + or - 1.2 dB over the operational band, with achievable output power greater than +10 dBm.