Frequency synthesizer

Abstract

A phase locked loop frequency synthesizer is arranged to provide a target frequency output signal for a radio transmitter or receiver. The synthesizer comprises: a voltage controlled oscillator (2) operating at a first frequency; a first, fixed frequency divider to provide a second frequency, a pre-scaler to provide a variable frequency division of said second frequency to produce a third frequency, said pre-scaler comprising: a second frequency divider (14) connected to said first output (12) and providing a second output at a second frequency; and a phase detector (4) controlling said voltage controlled oscillator (2) on the basis of a comparison between a reference signal and a signal dependent on said third frequency; wherein the synthesizer is configured so that said first output (10, 12) provides said target frequency output signal.

Claims

1. A phase locked loop frequency synthesizer arranged to provide a target frequency output signal for a radio transmitter or receiver, the synthesizer comprising: a voltage controlled oscillator operating at a first frequency; a first, fixed frequency divider arranged to provide a first output at a second frequency, wherein said second frequency is a fixed fraction of said first frequency; a pre-scaler arranged to provide a variable frequency division of said second frequency to produce a third frequency, said pre-scaler comprising: a second frequency divider connected to said first output and providing a second output at the third frequency; and a phase selector arrangement arranged selectively to alter a phase of said second output in order to alter said third frequency; a frequency controller controlling said pre-scaler and thereby controlling said third frequency; and a phase detector controlling said voltage controlled oscillator on the basis of a comparison between a reference signal and a signal dependent on said third frequency; wherein the synthesizer is configured so that said first output provides said target frequency output signal; wherein the first frequency divider is arranged to provide the first output and a further output, the further output being at the second frequency and 90 degrees out of phase with the first output, and wherein the synthesizer is configured to provide said first output and said further output as target frequency output signals.

2. A synthesizer as claimed in claim 1 wherein the fixed fraction is half.

3. A synthesizer as claimed in claim 1 wherein the first frequency divider comprises a master-slave flip flop arrangement.

4. A synthesizer as claimed in claim 1 wherein the frequency controller comprises a sigma-delta modulator.

5. A radio transmitter comprising a frequency synthesizer as claimed in claim 1.

6. A radio transmitter as claimed in claim 5 provided on a semiconductor integrated circuit.

7. A radio receiver comprising a frequency synthesizer as claimed in claim 1.

8. A radio receiver as claimed in claim 7 provided on a semiconductor integrated circuit.

9. A synthesizer as claimed in claim 1 wherein the pre-scaler is arranged to provide a variable frequency division of said first output only to produce the third frequency.

Description

(1) An embodiment of the invention will now be described, by way of example only, with reference to the accompanying drawings in which:

(2) FIG. 1 is schematic diagram of a known PLL frequency synthesizer shown for reference purposes only;

(3) FIG. 2 is a schematic diagram of a PLL frequency synthesizer in accordance with an embodiment of the invention;

(4) FIG. 3 is a schematic diagram of a divide-by-two frequency divider using master/slave flip-flops; and

(5) FIG. 4 is a timing diagram illustrating how frequency variation is achieved.

(6) A conventional fractional N PLL is shown in FIG. 1. As with any PLL this is based on a VCO 102 which is controlled by a phase detector 104 via a low-pass filter 106. The phase detector 104 causes small adjustments to the frequency of the VCO 102 in order to bring the phase (and therefore frequency) of the fed-back signal into alignment with the reference clock CK_REF. It will be noted that the VCO 102 is running at the output frequency CK_OUT.

(7) A pre-scaler circuit 108 is used to divide the frequency by P or P+1 depending upon the control signal it receives from a further divider module 110, which divides the frequency by a further integer N before feeding the phase detector 104. The frequency of the VCO 102 is therefore controlled to be F.sub.ref*N*(nP+m(P+1)) where F.sub.ref is the reference crystal frequency and n and m are the relative proportions of the occurrences of the respective counts P and P+1 over a given time period.

(8) The divider module 110 is controlled by a sigma-delta modulator (SDM) 112 to determine the above-mentioned relative proportions of P and P+1 counts, so determining the precise frequency. In this circuit there is inevitably quantisation noise coming from the SDM 112 corresponding to steps of 32 MHz (the reference frequency, F.sub.ref).

(9) The precisely divided average frequency signal is fed to the phase detector 104 which generates an output signal to control the VCO 102 in accordance with any mismatch between the signal from the divider 110 and the reference clock input signal CK_REF.

(10) An embodiment of the present invention is shown in FIG. 2. In this embodiment there is also provided a phase-locked loop based on a voltage-controlled oscillator 2 which is controlled by a phase detector 4, via a low-pass filter 6. In this arrangement however rather than the VCO 2 providing the CK_OUT signal directly, the output of the VCO 2 is instead fed to a divide-by-two module 8. This means that the VCO 2 runs at twice the desired output frequency.

(11) As is shown in FIG. 3 the divider is based on a master/slave flip-flop arrangement comprising a pair of D-type flip-flops 7, 9. Such an arrangement can be used as the divider 8 is a fixed divide-by-two module and is not required to alter its output. One advantage of this arrangement is that it provides two outputs: the first output 10 provided by the Q and QN outputs of the first flip-flop 7 being in phase with the input and the second output 12 provided by the Q and QN outputs of the second flip-flop 9 being 90 out of phase with the input. As will be apparent to those skilled in the art this provides the in-phase (I) and quadrature (Q) signals required in conventional digital radio architectures. Such an arrangement is known per se in the art but has been recognised as being particularly advantageous in the present context.

(12) The second, 90 shifted output 12 is fed to a further divide-by-two module 14. This has the feature that the phase of its output can be brought forward by 90, 180 or 270 depending on the signal it receives from a phase selector 16. As will be explained further below, this effectively allows an additional count in a given cycle thus allowing fine-tuning of the average frequency of its output signal in a manner analogous to the variable divider 108 described above with reference to FIG. 1. An example of a suitable circuit arrangement giving this feature is shown in A 1.75-GHz/3-V dual-modulus divide-by-128/129 prescaler in 0.7-m CMOS. Craninckx, J.; Steyaert, M. S. J. Solid-State Circuits, IEEE Journal of. Volume: 31 Issue: 7, Page(s): 890-897.

(13) The output _OUT of the divider and phase selector arrangement 14, 16 is fed to a further fixed divider 18 which divides the frequency by two before interfacing with a frequency controller module 20 which carries out further division of the output from the preceding divider 18 down to the reference frequency CK_REF and controls the phase selection in the module 16. The module 20 is controlled by a sigma-delta modulator 22 to effect frequency control from the frequency control input 24 in a similar manner to the arrangement described above with reference to FIG. 1.

(14) Although the arrangement shown in FIG. 2 requires a divider module 8 operating at twice the output frequency, as mentioned above one of the advantages of the overall circuit arrangement is that because a fixed ratio divider module 8 is used, this can be implemented using a master/slave flip-flop arrangement which provides direct I and Q signals and so obviates the need for a second divider running at twice the output frequency or even another PLL. The other dividers 14, 18, 20 are clocked by the preceding one or by the reference clock CK_REF and so operate at lower frequencies.

(15) Another advantage achieved by the embodiment described above is that because the frequency is halved before it is output, the step size is reduced to 16 MHz instead of 32 MHz which corresponds to up to a 6 dB reduction in SDM phase noise on the outputs 10, 12.

(16) In operation the circuit shown in FIG. 2 can either divide the frequency of the VCO 2 by eightarising from division by two at each of the dividers 8, 14 and 18or it can divide the frequency by nine. This is achieved by bringing forward the phase of the intermediate divider 14 by 90. This means that the next positive edge of the signal seen by module 20 is after nine cycles of the VCO 2 as may be seen more clearly from the timing diagram in FIG. 4.

(17) FIG. 4 is s timing diagram for various parts of the circuit shown in FIG. 2. The top plot VCO_P is one of two outputs from the VCO 2. The next plot CK_OUT_Q is the output 12 from the divider 8 which is used to clock the divide-by-two module 14. The next four plots _IN_0, _IN_90, _IN_180 and _IN_270 are the four possible outputs _OUT of the divide-by-two module 14. The plot below these four is the actual output, _OUT. Below this is used, indicates which of the four possible outputs is selected at a given time and the actual output

(18) As may be seen the selected one of the _IN signals is passed through the phase selector module 16 to the further divide-by-two module 18. The output of this module 18 provides the clock input CK_DIVN to the DIVN module 20, which is therefore at half the frequency of _OUT.

(19) In use in the example shown in FIG. 4 _IN_0 is used for the first three clock cycles of CK_OUT_Q and then during the fourth clock cycle the phase selector 16 receives a signal from the dividers 20 and 18 to start using the _IN_90 input instead of the _IN_0 input. The effect of this is that the _IN_90 is used as the output _OUT which therefore prolongs the low part of the signal seen at _OUT. As indicated at the bottom of FIG. 4 the resultant impact is that a full cycle of the CK_DIVN signal is nine cycle periods of the VCO 2 rather than eight which it would have been had the _IN_90 signal not been used. The use of this signal therefore allows the overall divider arrangement 14, 16, 18 to divide by eight or nine depending upon the control inputs applied to the phase selector 16.

(20) It follows from this that by choice of the relative proportions of the divide by eight and divide by nine counts, the average frequency of the outputs 10,12 can be changed from eight times the reference frequency F.sub.ref to nine times the reference frequency F.sub.ref in small stepse.g. of 1 MHz.