Kaben Wireless Silicon

Frequency Synthesizers are fundamental building blocks in wireless systems. The market is continually demanding the integration of additional standards into multi-mode wireless Systems-On-a-Chip (SoC). The increased level of integration continue to drive synthesizer development.

Each wireless standard has a specific crystal frequency. When a multi-standard design uses a crystal frequency from one standard it becomes a challenge to achieve the channel spacing required for any other standard. Using an Integer-N synthesizer and a single crystal frequency results in unacceptable phase noise. The solution has been to integrate DS Fractional-N frequency synthesizers. This solved the issue of low phase noise inside the loop bandwidth while delivering the required step size for each standard at the cost of introducing out-of-band quantization noise. However, the solution for the additional quantization noise is to have a narrow loop filter which is the opposite of a wide loop bandwidth required for good switching speed.

This flexibility can be achieved by integrating a Second Generation DS fractional-N synthesizer. Synthesizers can be improved by having a DS phase detector and a digitally programmable loop bandwidth that can deliver a wide loop bandwidth to achieve the desired switching speed and then switch to a narrow loop bandwidth to attenuate quantization noise.

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