The noise and spur delusion in fractional-N frequency synthesizer design

The standard design methodology for fractional-N frequency synthesizers assumes that the filtered shaped quantization noise from the requantizer is masked below the spectral envelope of the underlying integer-N synthesizer. Fractional-N frequency synthesizers are notorious for exhibiting an elevated noise floor and an unpredictable pattern of spurs. In this paper, we argue that designers should not be deluded by the overly conservative predictions of the simplified linear model but should instead consider nonlinearities as early as possible in the design process.