Stability and Phase-Noise Analysis of Pulsed Injection-Locked Oscillators

An investigation of the stability and phase noise of oscillators driven with pulsed signals is presented. The aim is to generalize the theory of sinusoidal injection-locked oscillators to the case of oscillators driven with multiharmonic sources. As will be shown, under the pulse injection, a multiresonance phenomenon occurs in the circuit, leading to broad ultra-subharmonic synchronization bands. The stability phenomena delimiting these bands are analyzed through the detection of the oscillation-burst maxima, in the time domain, and the results are validated with pole-zero identification. The rich nonlinear dynamics is investigated, with detailed explanations of the various bifurcations detected. The phase-noise response of the pulse injection-locked oscillator is analyzed and related to the stability properties of the synchronized steady state. The investigation is illustrated through application to a pulse injection oscillator at 5.7 GHz.