Three two-hour sessions. Timing-related problems associated with signal sources are one of the major bottlenecks in designing today’s highly complex systems. Over many decades, jitter has been extensively studied and utilized to characterize timing inaccuracies in both digital and analog systems. Conversely, phase noise has been exclusively used in RF systems to represent frequency or phase inaccuracy. For both timing and frequency sensitive systems, phase noise measurement is emerging to be the most accurate method of characterizing all types of signal sources (RF, analog or digital). This short course covers the fundamentals of phase noise and jitter, which ultimately set the limit to PLL performance in applications such as frequency synthesis, serial data communication and clock/data recovery. Simple techniques to model phase noise at the circuit component-level and relate it to the overall phase noise and jitter performance of PLLs are presented. The course will also provide a detailed analysis of the different phase noise measurement techniques along with in-depth noise floor analysis. The focus throughout this course will be on providing practical measures utilizing numerous real life examples. This course is available as part of the RF Mentor Academy Subscription.
