Temperature Compensated SAW Oscillator from Q-Tech

2nd September 2013

Nat Bowers

0 0

Q-Tech has been the leading manufacturer of high reliability hybrid quartz crystal clock oscillators for many years. They have recently seen a demand for clock oscillators at frequencies that cannot be generated by a conventional quartz crystal clock oscillator without three or four stages of frequency multiplication which degrades the signal phase noise and jitter performance.

To meet the demand for much higher frequencies and improved phase noise/jitter Q-Tech has developed a new family of Temperature Compensated SAW Oscillators (TCSO) which can generate a low phase noise/low jitter signal output at frequencies between 300 MHz and 2.5 Ghz. Q-Tech has overcome the poor temperature stability exhibited by SAW oscillators by adding temperature compensation to the oscillator’s design. The Q-Tech TCSO’s signal output can hold a stability of +/-50PPM over a temperature range of -40 to +85 Degrees Centigrade with a phase noise floor as low as -180dbc/Hz and -130dbc/Hz at 1KHz off-set from the output frequency.

For software defined radio systems and other applications using high frequency ADCs the Q-Tech TCSO’s low phase noise/low jitter signal can deliver an improved system signal to noise ratio.

An additional feature of the TCSO is that the output frequency can be pulled +/- 100PPM by an external control voltage making it suitable for use in a PLL to generate a low phase noise signal for radio transmission.

For the most demanding environments and specifications Q-Tech can supply one of their own high reliability TCXO or OCXO reference oscillators to phase lock the low phase noise TCSO in a single package. A typical PLL assembly could integrate a 2Ghz TCXO locked to a 5Mhz OCXO with a 6 times low noise frequency multiplier to generate a 12Ghz low phase noise output signal. For less demanding environments Q-Tech has a non-hermetic 9mm x 14mm surface mount package which can be integrated into a cost effective system design.

Evaluation units at 1GHz can be obtained from Q-Tech’s UK representative Wavelength Electronics Ltd.