Wide-Band Frequency Synthesizer with Ultra-Low Phase Noise Using an Optical Clock Source

This paper presents an ultra-wideband and ultra-low noise frequency synthesizer using a mode-locked laser as its reference. The frequency synthesizer can lock in the frequency range from 2GHz to 20 GHz on any harmonic of a mode-locked laser optical pulse train. The integrated rms-jitter (1 kHz–100 MHz) of the synthesizer is less than 5 fs in the frequency range from 4 GHz to 20 GHz with a typical value of 4 fs and a minimum of 3 fs. This is the first reported wideband phase locked loop achieving sub-10 fs rms-jitter for offset frequencies larger than 1 kHz.