Intellectual Merit: Oscillators are fundamental building blocks in communication systems, radars and many electronic circuits. Phase noise of the oscillators limits the performance of the RF and microwave transceivers. Phase noise of the local oscillator in a radio receiver down converts the adjacent channels into intermediate frequency thereby limiting receiver's immunity to nearby interference and jamming. Phase noise of local oscillator in a transmitter corrupts the information carried in the phase of the carrier. In a radio transmitter phase noise can also overwhelm the nearby weak channels. Since the number of wireless subscribers and thus, the amount of RF interference continue to increase, modern communication standards demand excellent phase noise performance from local oscillators in transceivers. Within this project several new circuit approaches for the design of integrated low phase noise microwave and millimeter wave oscillators are proposed. This project can also opens potential avenues for the design of other type circuits like high performance active filters.
Broader Impacts: Any advancement in the design of simple and low phase noise oscillators will help to improve the overall communication systems performance and can relieve the stringent requirement on the other transceiver blocks. Hence, this project if successful not only can reduce the cost of the overall communication system but also can impact the performance of other systems like radars and digital circuits. This project will serve to educate graduate students through direct participation in the research. In addition, the existing outreach programs aimed at promoting diversity among scientists and engineers will be supported. They include the involvement of undergraduate students through the University Research Opportunity Program (UROP) at the University Of Michigan, the NSF REU as well as the Maria Sara Parker Programs.
