IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MICROWAVE THEORY AND TECHNIQUES, VOL. 57, NO.
8, AUGUST 2009
Low Phase-Noise Planar Oscillators Employing
Elliptic-Response Bandpass Filters
Jonghoon Choi, Member, IEEE, Morteza Nick, Student Member, IEEE, and Amir Mortazawi, Fellow, IEEE
AbstractIn this paper, a low phase-noise planar oscillator em-
ploying an elliptic bandpass filter as a frequency stabilization el-
ement within its feedback loop is presented. The oscillator phase
noise is significantly reduced by taking advantage of the group-
delay peaks formed at the passband edges of the elliptic filter. A
filter optimization technique for low phase-noise oscillator designs
is introduced and applied to a four-pole bandpass elliptic filter. An
-band oscillator using the optimized filter in the feedback loop
is designed and tested. At the oscillation frequency of 8.05 GHz,
the measured phase noise is 143.5 dBc/Hz at 1-MHz offset fre-
quency. The oscillator exhibits an output power of 3.5 dBm with
an dcRF efficiency of 10%. To the authors best knowledge, this
is the lowest phase noise performance for an -band planar mi-
crowave oscillator.
Index TermsElliptic filter, microwave oscillator, phase noise,
quality factor, resonator.
I. INTRODUCTION
P HASE NOISE of oscillators degrades the peformance
of communication and radar systems [1]. The most
commonly used technique to achieve low phase noise in mi-
crowave oscillators is to employ high- resonators such as
high-permittivity dielectric resonantors (DRs). However, DRs
are not amenable to integrated circuits fabrication due to their
bulky and nonplanar structure. To address this issue, several
types of planar microwave oscillators have been suggested as a
substitute for DR oscillators. Most of the previous studies have
focused on designing high- planar-type single resonators in-
cluding hair-pin resonators [2], active resonators [3], split-ring
resonators [4], spiral resonators [5], and ring resonators [6].
These resonators are usually placed at the gate or base termi-
nals of active devices as frequency stabilization elements in a
series-feedback configuration.
Microwave oscillators can also be designed in a parallel feed-
back configuration. Usually a bandpass filter in the feedback
loop is used as a frequency-selective element. Filters consisting
of multiple resonators can significantly enhance the oscillator
as compared to single resonators because group delay in-
Manuscript received October 14, 2008; revised March 03, 2009. First pub-
lished July 10, 2009; current version published August 12, 2009. This work was
supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant EECS0725593.
J. Choi was with the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Depart-
ment, The University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, Ann Arbor, MI 48109 USA.
He is now with Qualcomm Incorporated, Campbell, CA 95008 USA (e-mail:
jonghoon@qualcomm.com).
M. Nick and A. Mortazawi are with the Electrical Engineering and Computer
Science Department, The University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, Ann Arbor, MI
48109-2122 USA (e-mail: amirm@eecs.umich.edu).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TMTT.2009.2025424
0018-9480/$26.00 2009 IEEE
1959
creases by adding more resonators. The first demonstration of
low phase-noise oscillator design using multiple-pole bandpass
filters is presented in [7] where LC filters with Butterworth or
Chebyshev responses were employed in the feedback loop of
oscillators. In this paper, an elliptic-response bandpass filter is
utilized for the design of a low phase-noise oscillator for the first
time. Due to the presence of transmission zeros in their transfer
functions, elliptic filters generate large group-delay peaks at
their passband edges, making them capable of providing high
loaded quality factors . In general, the frequency-depen-
dent group-delay characteristic of elliptic filters is undesirable
due to the signal distortion it causes in communications sys-
tems [8]. However, in this study, we take advantage of nonlinear
group-delay response of elliptic filters to design low phase-noise
oscillators.
In our previous study [9], a low phase-noise oscillator em-
ploying a four-pole quasi-elliptic bandpass filter was demon-
strated. This study expands on the design details of the oscillator
and introduces a filter optimization technique for low phase-
noise oscillator applications. It is shown that the phase noise
of the oscillator can be improved by proper design of the filter
in the feedback loop. An 8.05-GHz oscillator utilizing the op-
timized filter is designed and fabricated. The new oscillator ex-
hibits phase-noise improvements of 6.5 and 3.5 dB at 100-kHz
and 1-MHz offset frequencies, respectively, as compared to the
previous design in [9].
A brief review of phase noise in feedback oscillators is given
in Section II. The group-delay characteristics of elliptic-re-
sponse filters and their optimization method for designing low
phase-noise oscillators are then discussed. Section III presents
the design procedure and measurement results for an 8-GHz
low phase-noise oscillator employing the optimized four-pole
filter in the feedback loop. To the authors best knowledge, the
oscillator presented in this paper demonstrates the lowest phase
noise among published -band hybrid planar free-running
oscillators.
II. THEORY
A. Phase Noise in Feedback Oscillators
A block diagram of a feedback oscillator is shown in Fig. 1. A
bilaterally conjugate matched amplifier provides the loop gain
and the resonator/bandpass filter in the feedback path acts as
a frequency-selective element. An approximate, but practically
important equation for phase noise in feedback oscillators de-
rived by Leeson [10][12] is
(1)
1960 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MICROWAVE THEORY AND TECHNIQUES, VOL. 57, NO. 8, AUGUST 2009
Fig. 1. Block diagram of a feedback oscillator.
where is feedback loss, is amplifier excess noise figure,
is Boltzman constant, is ambient temperature, is oscillator
output power, is flicker noise corner frequency, is the
offset frequency, and is the feedback path group delay as
defined by
(2)
where and are the open-loop phase response and
loaded quality factor of the feedback loop, respectively. Equa-
tion (1) indicates that phase noise in oscillators is decreased as
group delay or equivalently is increased. One possible way
of achieving high group delays is to use high-order bandpass
filters in the feedback loop of oscillators. On the other hand,
according to (1), insertion loss of the filter is another important
parameter that directly affects the phase-noise performance
of the feedback oscillators. Therefore, to evaluate the overall
effect of the bandpass filter on the oscillator phase noise, a
phase-noise figure-of-merit (PNFOM) can be defined as [13]
(dB) (3)
To reduce the phase noise of the oscillator, one needs to decrease
the PNFOM of the filter in the oscillators feedback loop. In this
study, a four-pole elliptic response bandpass filter is designed
to achieve a minimum PNFOM, making it attractive for low
phase-noise oscillator applications. This filter is then used in
the feedback loop of an oscillator to achieve a low phase-noise
performance.
B. Elliptic Filters for Low Phase-Noise Oscillators Design
To achieve low phase-noise performance in feedback oscil-
lators, a bandpass filter with a high group-delay value at the
frequency of oscillation is required. The frequency response of
a filter can be determined by finding the number and the lo-
cation of the poles and zeros of its transfer function. Transfer
functions of Butterworth and Chebyshev filters have only poles
while those of elliptic filters have the same number of poles and
zeros. Due to the existence of zeros, elliptic filters are capable
Fig. 2. Comparison of group-delay responses of Butterworth, Chebyshev, and
elliptic bandpass filters.
Fig. 3. Coupling structure of a four-pole elliptic filter.
of providing sharper rolloffs and higher selectivity than Butter-
worth and Chebyshev filters and, thus, they can provide larger
group delays. Fig. 2 shows the comparison of group-delay re-
sponses of a Butterworth, a Chebyshev, and an elliptic four-pole
bandpass filter. These three filters have the same center fre-
quency of 9 GHz and a bandwidth (BW) of 300 MHz. Large
group-delay peaks at the edges of the passband are observed in
the elliptic filter response, due to its close-to-passband trans-
mission zeros. It is worthwhile to mention that the filters have
almost similar insertion-loss values at these frequencies. Con-
sequently, the PNFOM of an elliptic filter is lower than that of
a Butterworth and a Chebyshev filter of the same order. There-
fore, by using an elliptic filter in the feedback loop of an oscil-
lator operating at the frequency of the group-delay peaks, a low
phase-noise performance can be achieved.
C. Filter Design and Optimization
In microwave circuits, the elliptic-response filter is mainly re-
alized with a selective quasi-elliptic function having only one
pair of transmission zeros, which provides an intermediate re-
sponse between elliptic and Chebyshev filters. Fig. 3 shows the
coupling structure of a four-pole quasi-elliptic filter. Resonators
1 and 2, 2 and 3, and 3 and 4 are directly coupled, while res-
onators 1 and 4 are cross-coupled. Directly coupled resonators
have a positive coupling coefficient, while the cross-coupling
CHOI et al.: LOW PHASE-NOISE PLANAR OSCILLATORS EMPLOYING ELLIPTIC-RESPONSE BANDPASS FILTERS
Fig. 4. Agilent ADS schematic circuit for filter simulations.
coefficient between resonators 1 and 4 is negative. The cross
coupling introduces a single pair of transmission zeros, leading
to filters elliptic response. Elliptic filters in conventional ap-
plications are designed to meet some predetermined specifica-
tions such as BW, return loss, rejection, etc., whereas in low
phase-noise oscillators, the PNFOM is the performance crite-
rion. Equation (3) can be modified to express the PNFOM in
terms of the of the filter
(4)
Since of the quasi-elliptic filter is a function of number
of poles ( ), passband BW, location of zero , and return
loss ), the PNFOM is consequently a function of these
parameters. Therefore, the design optimization goal would be
finding proper values for number of poles ( ), BW, return loss
, and location of transmission zero that minimize the
PNFOM.
The optimization procedure is detailed here. First, the
coupling matrices (M) and the input and output coupling co-
efficients are calculated for various filter orders, BWs,
return losses, and locations of zeros. Utilizing these design
parameters, an Agilent ADS schematic circuit, as shown in
Fig. 4, is simulated to obtain the of various filters. Here,
the lumped RLC elements represent the four synchronously
tuned resonators and are determined in terms of the filter design
parameters [8]
(pF)
(nH)
(5)
where is the angular frequency at the midband frequency of
the filter and is the external quality factor of resonators at the
input and output. is the resonators unloaded quality factor
signifying the resonators losses. The unloaded quality factor for
the resonators used in this study was determined by simulating
an 8-GHz microstrip open square-loop resonator on a Rogers
RT/Duroid 5880 substrate ( , mil) using the
IE3D software package. The simulated for the resonators
is 200. The quarter-wavelength transmission lines are used to
1961
represent the couplings and their characteristic impedances are
determined by [8]
(6)
where is the input/output (I/O) terminal
impedance.
Fig. 5 depicts the PNFOM versus frequency for several
values of BW, and for a four-pole bandpass filter. It
is observed that for each case there is a minimum PNFOM
occurring at a particular frequency. The oscillator utilizing the
filter in its feedback loop should be designed at this frequency
to achieve the lowest phase noise. Furthermore, Fig. 5 shows
that the minimum PNFOM of the filter depends on the filter
parameters. To determine the best values for these parameters,
the minimum PNFOMs were plotted versus parameter varia-
tions for each case, as shown in Fig. 6. According to Fig. 6(a),
a filter with a narrower BW has a lower PNFOM and, thus,
is better suited for low phase-noise oscillator designs. This
behavior can be attributed to the sharper selectivity of narrow-
band filters.
Fig. 6(b) shows the effect of the location of transmission zero
on the PNFOM. Ideally, as approaches the edge of the
passband, the filter exhibits a sharper skirt, and thus, the group
delays peak value increases. In reality, resonators losses de-
grade the performance of the filters with very close to passband
zeros, causing the group-delay peak value to drop. Therefore,
after a certain point, the PNFOM does not decrease anymore
as is pushed closer to the passband. This can be seen in
Fig. 6(b) where the PNFOM increases for transmission zeros
less than . Therefore, the optimum value of the trans-
mission zero location for the filter under study is . In
general, the location of transmission zero can be closer to the
passband edge as the of the resonators increases, allowing
lower PNFOM values to be achieved. This is demonstrated in
Fig. 7 where the PNFOM of a filter with resonators of 1000
is compared with the PNFOM of our filter with of 200. The
optimum value for the filter with resonators is
, which is less than the optimum value of the filter
under study.
Finally, shown in Fig. 6(c), is the effect of the return loss on
the filters PNFOM. A lower return loss results in a higher se-
lectivity at the cost of higher insertion loss. Due to this tradeoff,
there is an optimum value for the return loss, which is
dB for the filter in this paper. In summary, the optimum
four-pole filter parameters for minimum PNFOM were deter-
mined to be , , and dB. The
limited quality factor of the resonators used here does not allow
one to design filters with BWs smaller than 2.2%.
1962 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MICROWAVE THEORY AND TECHNIQUES, VOL. 57, NO. 8, AUGUST 2009

(a) (b) (c)

Fig. 5. PNFOM versus frequency for different: (a) BWs, (b) normalized location of transmission zeros, and (c) return losses of four-pole elliptic filters.

(a) (b) (c)

Fig. 6. Minimum PNFOM versus: (a) passband BW, (b) normalized location of transmission zero, and (c) return loss of four-pole elliptic filters.

Another important parameter of a filter that affects the PNFOM

is its order ( ). Ideally, an increase in the filters order results in
a higher group delay, and thus, reduces the PNFOM. However, in
practice, increasing the bandpass filters order causes a higher in-
sertion loss and thereby can adversely affect the PNFOM. There-
fore, one needs to find the optimum order of the filter for achieving
a low PNFOM. An analysis similar to that of the four-pole filters
was performed on the six-pole filters with different values of BW,
location of transmission zero, and return loss. As expected, the
previously discussed results about four-pole filters parameters
similarly apply to the six-pole filters. In fact, it was found that
an optimized six-pole filter provides up to 2 dB lower PNFOMs,
indicating that a six-pole filter would be a better candidate for
low phase-noise oscillator applications, as compared to four-
pole filters. Nevertheless, in this paper, the optimized four-pole
filter was utilized in the oscillator design since its PNFOM is
low enough to achieve a low phase-noise operation of the oscil-
Fig. 7. PNFOM of the four-pole elliptic filer versus normalized location of
lator. It also provides a lower insertion loss and a smaller size, Q
transmission zero for a low-loss ( = 1000) and a medium-loss ( Q = 200)
making the oscillator design easier. substrate.
CHOI et al.: LOW PHASE-NOISE PLANAR OSCILLATORS EMPLOYING ELLIPTIC-RESPONSE BANDPASS FILTERS
Fig. 8. Layout of the optimized four-pole elliptic filter.
Fig. 9. Simulation and measurement results for the PNFOM of the four-pole
elliptic bandpass filter.
The PNFOM-optimized four-pole filter is implemented on a
Rogers RT/Duroid 5880 substrate ( , mil). The
coupling matrix and the I/O coupling coefficients are
(7)
(8)
Based on the above coupling matrix and I/O coupling coeffi-
cients, full-wave electromagnetic (EM) simulations using IE3D
are performed to determine the exact physical layout for the
filter, as shown in Fig. 8. The overall physical size of the filter is
12.6 mm 12.4 mm. Fig. 9 shows the simulation and measure-
ment results for the PNFOM of the elliptic filter. The PNFOM
minimum value occurs at the frequency of 8.07 GHz. At this fre-
quency, the loaded of the filter was measured to be 180. The
feedback oscillator utilizing the PNFOM-optimized filter is de-
signed to operate at this frequency to achieve a low phase-noise
performance.
III. OSCILLATOR DESIGN AND MEASUREMENT RESULTS
An -band microwave oscillator is designed based on the
four-pole elliptic bandpass filter described in Section II-C. A
parallel feedback configuration is chosen to design the external
1963
Fig. 10. Circuit schematic of the X -band SiGe HBT oscillator employing the
four-pole elliptic bandpass filter.
feedback network. A circuit schematic of the oscillator em-
ploying the elliptic bandpass filter is shown in Fig. 10. The
oscillator design procedure is summarized here. First, the input
and output of the transistor are bilaterally conjugate matched
to 50 . The elliptic filter is then connected to the amplifiers
input as a frequency-stabilization element. The filter amplifier
formed in this way (marked by the solid-line box in Fig. 10)
is simulated using the harmonic balance method in Agilents
Advanced Design System (ADS). The voltages and currents at
the input and output terminals of the filter amplifier ( , , ,
) are determined at a specific RF input power level. Finally,
the -feedback network is synthesized using the substitution
theory [14].
The oscillator was fabricated on a Rogers RT/Duroid 5880
substrate. A circuit prototyping machine was used in the os-
cillator fabrication. Although the filter part of the oscillator is
most sensitive to fabrication tolerances, it can tolerate fabrica-
tion errors of 25 m or less without considerable loss of per-
formance. The active device is a packaged SiGe HBT (NEC
NESG2030M04) biased at a collectoremitter voltage of 2 V
with a collector current of 11 mA. The top view of the fabri-
cated oscillator is shown in Fig. 11. The measured oscillation
frequency is 8.05 GHz with the output power of 3.5 dBm after
deembedding the cable and bias tee. The amount of the con-
sumed dc power is 22 mW, corresponding to an RFdc effi-
ciency of 10%. The oscillator phase noise is measured based
on the FM discriminator technique with the phase-noise mea-
surement system Agilent E5504A. As shown in Fig. 12, the
measured phase noise is 122.5 dBc/Hz and 143.5 dBc/Hz
at 100-kHz and 1-MHz offset frequencies, respectively. The os-
cillators phase noise was simulated in Agilent ADS by taking
into account the thermal noise sources. Since the transistors
noise model does not include flicker noise sources, the simula-
tion results are invalid in the flicker frequency noise region. This
can be observed in Fig. 12, where the simulation and measure-
ment results are in good agreement, except for the region
caused by flicker noise sources. According to the measurement,
the corner frequency is around 100 kHz. Table I compares
the performance of the SiGe HBT elliptic-filter oscillator with
1964 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MICROWAVE THEORY AND TECHNIQUES, VOL. 57, NO. 8, AUGUST 2009
X
Fig. 11. Fabricated -band SiGe HBT oscillator employing the four-pole el-
liptic bandpass filter.
Fig. 12. Measured (solid line) and simulated (dashed line) phase noise for the
X
SiGe HBT -band oscillator.
other reported microwave planar free-running oscillators at -
and -band. To the authors best knowledge, the oscillator pre-
sented in this paper demonstrates the lowest phase-noise per-
formance among published -band microwave planar hybrid
free-running oscillators.
In this paper, a low phase-noise fixed frequency oscillator was
designed by employing a four-pole elliptic bandpass filter. How-
ever, in most communication systems, a voltage-controlled os-
cillator (VCO) is required for band selection and channel tuning.
Two possible approaches can be considered for providing the
frequency tuning capability in this type of oscillator. The first
method is to tune the oscillation frequency within the passband
of the elliptic filter through an adjustable pi-feedback network.
In this case, some degradation in oscillator phase noise would
be expected due to the variations of PNFOM over the tuning
frequency, as indicated in Fig. 5. Nevertheless, simulation re-
sults indicate that the phase noise does not drastically change
over the tuning range for oscillators employing moderate quality
factor resonators. The oscillator in this paper is expected to
TABLE I
COMPARISON WITH OTHER REPORTED MICROWAVE
PLANAR HYBRID OSCILLATORS
incur phase-noise variations of up to 3 dB over a tuning range
of 120 MHz. As an alternative approach, tunable bandpass fil-
ters could be employed to design a tunable oscillator. In this
case, the optimum PNFOM could be maintained to prevent the
phase-noise degradation of the oscillator over its tuning range.
Based on the conventional tuning techniques demonstrated in
[17][19], the oscillator presented in this paper is expected to
achieve more than 10% frequency tunability.
IV. CONCLUSION
A low phase-noise microwave oscillator employing a
four-pole elliptic microstrip bandpass filter has been presented.
In order to achieve the best phase-noise performance from the
oscillator, the filter in the feedback loop of the oscillator is
optimized for the minimum PNFOM. The optimization method
determines the optimum values for the order, BW, location of
transmission zero, and the return loss of the filter. An 8.05-GHz
oscillator utilizing the four-pole PNFOM-optimized filter was
designed and fabricated on a Rogers RT/Duroid 5880 substrate
with an SiGe HBT packaged transistor as the active device.
The phase noise of the oscillator was measured to be 122.5
and 143.5 dBc at 100-kHz and 1-MHz offset frequencies,
respectively. Compared to the previously published oscillator in
[9], which utilizes a four-pole elliptic filter in its feedback loop,
the oscillator presented in this paper demonstrates phase-noise
improvements of 6.5 and 3.5 dB at 100-kHz and 1-MHz offset
frequencies, respectively. The oscillator presented in this paper
demonstrates the lowest phase-noise performance among
published -band microwave planar hybrid free-running
oscillators.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors wish to thank J. Lee, The University of Michigan
at Ann Arbor, for helpful discussions on the filter design.
CHOI et al.: LOW PHASE-NOISE PLANAR OSCILLATORS EMPLOYING ELLIPTIC-RESPONSE BANDPASS FILTERS
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Jonghoon Choi (S03M07) received the B.S. and
M.S. degrees from Seoul National University, Seoul,
Korea, in 1997 and 1999, respectively, and the Ph.D.
degree in electrical engineering from The University
of Michigan at Ann Arbor, in 2007.
Upon graduation, he joined Qualcomm Incorpo-
rated, Campbell, CA, where he is currently a Senior
RF Integrated Circuit (RFIC) Design Engineer. His
research interests include low phase-noise RF/mi-
crowave oscillators and RF integrated circuits.
Dr. Choi was a recipient of the Information Tech-
nology Fellowship administered by the Korean Ministry of Information and
Communication. He was also the recipient of the Honorable Mention Award of
the Student Paper Competition presented at the 2005 IEEE Microwave Theory
and Techniques Society (IEEE MTT-S) International Microwave Symposium
(IMS), Long Beach, CA.
Morteza Nick (S06) received the B.S. degree in
electrical engineering from Isfehan University of
Technology, Isfehan, Iran, in 2003, the M.S. degree
in electrical engineering from Sharif University of
Technology, Tehran, Iran, in 2005, and is currently
working toward the Ph.D. degree at The University
of Michigan at Ann Arbor.
His research interests include phase noise in oscil-
lators and efficient and linear power amplifier design.
Amir Mortazawi (M90SM05F05) received the
Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from The Uni-
versity of Texas at Austin, in 1990.
He is currently a Professor of electrical en-
gineering with The University of Michigan at
Ann Arbor. His research interests include mil-
limeter-wave phased arrays, power amplifiers,
power-combining techniques, and frequency-agile
microwave circuits.
Dr. Mortazawi is co-editor-in-chief of the IEEE
TRANSACTIONS ON MICROWAVE THEORY AND
TECHNIQUES. He is a member of the IEEE Microwave Theory and Techniques
Society (IEEE MTT-S) Administrative Committee (AdCom). He is the co-chair
of the IEEE MTT-16 Committee on Phased Arrays. He was an associate editor
for the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION (19982001),
an associate editor for the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MICROWAVE THEORY
AND TECHNIQUES (2005), and guest editor for the December 1995 Microwave
Symposium Special Issue of the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MICROWAVE THEORY
AND TECHNIQUES. He was a secretary to the IEEE MTT-S AdCom.