A wide band tuning system for fully integrated satellite receivers

The building blocks for a low power tuning system that reduces the phase noise of integrated VCO´s are described. The multi-modulus prescaler, the phase frequency detector and the wide band charge pump were integrated in a standard bipolar technology with 9 GHz npn-transistors and 200 MHz pnp-transistors. The maximum input frequency of the multi-modulus prescaler is 3 GHz, the maximum reference frequency of the phase frequency detector is 380 MHz and the -3 dB bandwidth of the charge pump is 41 MHz at a reference frequency of 300 MHz. The achieved performance enables use of noisy integrated VCO´s for reception of satellite digital signals.