| GaAs Monolithic Microwave Integrated Circuits (MMICs) are rapidly replacing existing technology due to their advantages in size, weight, cost and reliability. Many of the basic MMIC components (mixers, amplifiers, attenuators, etc.) are presently being used. However, MMIC oscillators are being rejected in many applications, primarily because of their inherently poor noise characteristics.;This thesis presents novel circuit configurations in MMIC form for a frequency halver and phase detector. Both of these circuits are theoretically analyzed in great detail and their operating criteria revealed.;An approximate algebraic method, based on the solution of a nonlinear differential equation, is used to obtain the steady state operation of the frequency halver. In the case of the phase detector, the analysis is based on the Ritz Method.;The novel circuits for the frequency halver and the phase detector are designed, fabricated and measured. Their performance is then evaluated and compared with their theoretical predictions.;A technique for improving the noise characteristics of MMIC oscillators by use of phase locking is reported in this thesis. Four configurations for phase locking a noisy oscillator to a clean reference are introduced as viable solutions. These different phase locking configurations are comprised of mixers, oscillators, multipliers, frequency dividers, loop filters and phase detectors. Of these components, only the frequency divider and phase detector have no current realization in MMICs. |
