Design of a Low Phase Noise Vt-DRO Based on Improvement of Dielectric Resonator Coupling Structure

In this paper, we present a Vt-DRO with a low phase noise, which is achieved by improving the coupling structure between the dielectric resonator and microstrip line. The Vt-DRO is a closed-loop type and is composed of 3 blocks; dielectric resonator, phase shifter, and amplifier. We propose a mathematical estimation method of phase noise, using the group delay of the resonator. By modifying the coupling structure between the dielectric resonator and microstrip line, we achieved a group delay of 53 nsec. For convenience of measurement, wafer probes were inserted at each stage to measure the S-parameters of each block. The measured S-parameter of the Vt-DRO satisfies the open-loop oscillation condition. The Vt-DRO was implemented by connecting the input and output of the designed open-loop to form a closed-loop. As a result, the phase noise of the Vt-DRO was measured as -132.7 dBc/Hz(@ 100 kHz offset frequency), which approximates the predicted result at the center frequency of 5.3 GHz. The tuning-range of the Vt-DRO is about 5 MHz for tuning voltage of 0~10 V and the power is 4.5 dBm. PFTN-FOM is -31 dBm.