Recommendations on low phase noise synthesizer - RF Cafe Forums

RF Cafe Forums closed its virtual doors in late 2012 mainly due to other social media platforms dominating public commenting venues. RF Cafe Forums began sometime around August of 2003 and was quite well-attended for many years. By 2012, Facebook and Twitter were overwhelmingly dominating online personal interaction, and RF Cafe Forums activity dropped off precipitously. Regardless, there are still lots of great posts in the archive that ware worth looking at. Below are the old forum threads, including responses to the original posts. Here is the full original RF Cafe Forums on Archive.org

-- Amateur Radio

-- Anecdotes, Gripes, & Humor

-- Antennas

-- CAE, CAD, & Software

-- Circuits & Components

-- Employment & Interviews

-- Miscellany

-- Swap Shop

-- Systems

-- Test & Measurement

-- Webmaster

NJKirchner
 Post subject: Recommendations on low phase noise synthesizer
Posted: Mon Dec 28, 2009 8:58 pm 
 
Captain
User avatar

Joined: Mon Dec 28, 2009 8:27 pm

Posts: 5

I'm looking around for recommendations on a basic CW functionality, extremely low phase noise synthesizer.

The Holzworth HS1001C is almost a perfect fit but alternative recommendations are what I'm looking to the RF Cafe brain trust for. :study:

https://www.holzworth.com/synthesizers.htm

The Holzworth fits the ticket due to it's outstanding phase noise, compact nature and software driven interface.

-120dBc/Hz @ 1G @10k offset or better is what I'm looking for.

Frequency ranges 10M -1G

So.... any recommendations?

-Norm Kirchner

RF Systems Engineer

National Instruments
 
   
 
d_erickson
 Post subject: Re: Recommendations on low phase noise synthesizer
Posted: Thu Dec 31, 2009 2:26 pm 
 
Lieutenant

Joined: Thu Dec 31, 2009 2:23 pm

Posts: 1

How about the Agilent E8663D-UNX.

-130 dBc/Hz @ 1 GHz, 10 KHz offset
 
   
 
NJKirchner
 Post subject: Re: Recommendations on low phase noise synthesizer
Posted: Thu Jan 07, 2010 11:30 am 
 
Captain
User avatar

Joined: Mon Dec 28, 2009 8:27 pm

Posts: 5

d_erickson wrote:
How about the Agilent E8663D-UNX.

-130 dBc/Hz @ 1 GHz, 10 KHz offset

I would call that the definition of overkill to the extreme.

Any other takers?
 
   
 
windfreak
 Post subject: Re: Recommendations on low phase noise synthesizer
Posted: Tue Jan 12, 2010 7:54 pm 
 
Lieutenant

Joined: Tue Jan 12, 2010 7:47 pm

Posts: 2

This has a phase noise of better than 0.4 degrees integrated from 100Hz to 1MHz. A very rough rule of thumb says that you can use that for a phase modulation with greater than 10 times that angle (4 degrees). Its very cheap: $250.

https://www.windfreak.net/Tech.htm
 
   
 
NJKirchner
 Post subject: Re: Recommendations on low phase noise synthesizer
Posted: Tue Jan 12, 2010 8:16 pm 
 
Captain
User avatar

Joined: Mon Dec 28, 2009 8:27 pm

Posts: 5

Windfreak,

Thanks for the thought, but that device doesn't hit either the frequency range or the phase noise requirements we're looking for.

The VCO on that part has a 10k SSB phase noise of -89dBC at 2.2GHz that's worlds and worlds away from the -120 I'm on the hunt for.

To clarify what I'm trying to do a little I'll give some more detail.

Currently our PXI-5663 has pretty good phase noise performance by taking advantage of the PXI-5652. The 5663 is actually 3 different PXI modules cabled together (LO PXI-5662, Downconverter PXI-5601, IF Digitizer PXI-5622).

Because of it's modular nature, we can substitute our LO with a different LO with even better phase noise performance when the measurements call for it. Just one of those 'Damn, that's sweet!' kind of capabilities you get with a Modular Instrument approach to RF test.

Posted  11/12/2012