Preliminary study on the vibration sensitivity performance of microwave components

Published

May 29, 2007

Author(s)

Archita Hati, Craig W. Nelson, David A. Howe, Neil Ashby, Jennifer A. Taylor, Kai Hudek, C. Hay, David Seidel, D. Eliyahu

Abstract

Vibration sensitivity is an important specification for oscillators on mobile systems, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) etc. These systems must provide superior performance when subject to severe environmental conditions. Electronic oscillators often can provide sufficiently low intrinsic phase modulation (PM) noise to satisfy particular system requirements when in a quiet environment. However, mechanical vibration and acceleration can introduce mechanical deformations that degrade the oscillators otherwise low PM noise. This degrades the performance of an electronic system that depends on this oscillator¿s low phase noise. Not only an oscillator, but most of the microwave components like microwave cables, circulators, and amplifiers are sensitive to vibration to some extent. Therefore, it is very important to select vibration-tolerant components in order to build a system with less vibration sensitivity. We study the performance of different microwave cables (flexible, semi-rigid as well as rigid) under vibration for different vibration profiles. Some good cables provide a vibration-sensitivity noise floor that provides sensitivity of 10^-11- 10^-12 per g for an oscillator under test. We also verified the reproducibility of each measurement after disassembly and reassembly. We studied the vibration sensitivity of a SiGe amplifier based surface transverse wave (STW) oscillator and an air-dielectric cavity resonator oscillator (ACRO) and compared their performances with a commercially available dielectric resonator oscillator (DRO). We also describe passive and active vibration cancellation schemes to reduce vibration induced noise in oscillators.

Proceedings Title

Proc. 2007 Joint Mtg. IEEE Intl. Freq. Cont. Symp. and EFTF Conf.

Conference Dates

May 29-June 1, 2007

Conference Location

Geneva,

Pub Type

Conferences

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Keywords

acceleration, amplifier, microwave, noise measurement, oscillator, phase noise, resonator, vibration

Citation

Hati, A. , Nelson, C. , Howe, D. , Ashby, N. , Taylor, J. , Hudek, K. , Hay, C. , Seidel, D. and Eliyahu, D. (2007), Preliminary study on the vibration sensitivity performance of microwave components, Proc. 2007 Joint Mtg. IEEE Intl. Freq. Cont. Symp. and EFTF Conf., Geneva, , [online], https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=50550 (Accessed February 10, 2025)