30 GHz Regenerative Frequency Divide-by-3

SummaryWe report the performance of a 30 GHz to 10 GHz regenerative frequency divider. The proposed divider design incorporates the conventional Miller regenerative frequency divider (divide-by-2) with an additional regenerative path. We achieve output referred phase modulation (PM) noise of ℒ(10 Hz) = −130 dBc/Hz and frequency stability of less than 1×10 ^{− 15} at a 1-second averaging period for the proposed divider. We further improve the flicker PM performance of this divider by implementing a parallel amplifier configuration and achieve an output referred phase noise of ℒ (10 Hz) = −138 dBc/Hz and ℒ(10 kHz) = −162 dBc/Hz. We also present simulation results of the closed-loop PM and amplitude modulation (AM) noise performance of a regenerative divide-by-2 circuit.