Phase and Amplitude Drift Research of Millimeter Wave Band Local Oscillator System

Abstract

In this paper, we developed a local oscillator (LO) system of millimeter wave band receiver for radio astronomy observation. We measured the phase and amplitude drift stability of this LO system. The voltage control oscillator (VCO) of this LO system use the 3 mm band Gunn oscillator. We developed the digital phase locked loop (DPLL) module for the LO PLL function that can be computer-controlled. To verify the performance, we measured the output frequency/power and the phase/amplitude drift stability of the developed module and the commercial PLL module, respectively. We show the good performance of the LO system based on the developed PLL module from the measured data analysis. The test results and discussion will be useful tutorial reference to design the LO system for very long baseline interferometry (VLBI) receiver and single dish radio astronomy receiver at the 3 mm frequency band.

Keywords

• heterodyne receiver
• local oscillator system
• Gunn oscillator
• digital phase locked loop
• phase/amplitude stability