HBAR-Based 3.6 GHz oscillator with low power consumption and low phase noise

Abstract

We have designed and built 2 oscillators at 1.2 and 3.6 GHz based on high-overtone bulk acoustic resonators (HBARs) for application in chip-scale atomic clocks (CSACs). The measured phase noise of the 3.6 GHz oscillator is -67 dBc/Hz at 300 Hz offset and -100 dBc/Hz at 10 kHz offset. The Allan deviation of the free-running oscillator is 1.5 x 10(-9) at one second integration time and the power consumption is 3.2 mW. The low phase noise allows the oscillator to be locked to a CSAC physics package without significantly degrading the clock performance.