A low noise local oscillator for wireless regional area network applications

Abstract

This work develops a high performance wideband and low noise local oscillator (LO) for wireless regional area network (WRAN) applications. The WRAN system uses the white spaces of the 50-860 MHz TV spectrum for increasing the spectrum efficiency. To cover such wideband operating range, we proposed a novel LO technique. This technique not only increases the operating range but also decreases the phase noise of the LO. Experimental results show that the proposed LO can achieves a wide operating range from 50 MHz to 1 GHz. The phase noise of the LO at 1 MHz offset frequency is as low as -131 and -132 dBc/Hz at 50 MHz and 1 GHz, respectively.