Title of Invention

A FREQUENCY SYNTHESISER AND A TRANSMITTER

Abstract A FREQUENCY SYNTHESISER AND A TRANSMITTER The present invention relates to a frequency synthesizer comprising a signal input, a sigma-delta modulator coupled to the signal input, a digital filter means coupled to an output of the sigma-delta modulator, and a phase locked loop having a frequency divider having a control input coupled to an output of the digital filter means, wherein the frequency divider comprises a fractional divider and in that the fiher means is configured to increase the number of output states by one over the number of input states.
Full Text The present invention relates to a fractional -N frequency synthesiser and to a transmitter including the fractional -N frequency synthesiser and can be applied to cellular radio applications such as GSM, The transmitter may comprise the transmitting section of a transceiver. The present invention also relates to an integrated circuit comprising the integratable components of the fractional -N synthesiser.
PCT Specification W099/I4859 discloses a sigma-delta modulator controlled phase locked loop (PLL) for use in a frequency synthesiser and/or to generate a phase modulated signal. This citation discloses a PLL comprising a frequency divider having a control input for a signal determining the division factor in the frequency divider. A sigma -delta modulator for generating a modulated signal has an output coupled to a digital filter for filtering the modulated signal and generating a filtered signal which is applied to the control input of the frequency divider. By filtering the output of the sigma - delta modulator, the quaSntization noise in the output signal produced by the sigma-deita modulator can be reduced within certain frequency regions. The reduction in quantization noise can, in turn, be traded for a reduced oversampling rate and/or decreased phase noise.
In implementing the cited PLL the coefficients of the digital filter are chosen such that its output is integer valued as long as Us input is integered valued. This is said to be an important feature because the frequency divider can only deal with integer valued division factors.
In order for the digital fiher to be able to carry out the operations decribed it is assumed that it is implemented as a Finite Impulse Response 30 (FIR) filter having a large number of stages which are necessary to introduce zeros to reduce noise. However by having such a large number of stages there is an equally large number of division ratios in the divider of the PLL which, in turn, translates into a large frequency gain. This degrades the signal to noise (SIN) ratio at the output of the PLL as well as causing an increase in power consumpfion. The poor SIN ratio will be

explained in the context of GSM which requires the frequency deviation to be ±t67. 7kHz. The input to the sigma-deita modulator is a succession of positive and negative voltages ; corresponding to Non Return to Zero (NRZ) bits. If the frequency gain of the PLL is large, then the input signal to the sigma-delta modulator has to be attenuated by the reciprocal of the gain. Since the output noise from the sigma-delta modulator is constant, this reduces the SIN ratio at the output of the PLL. The primary task of the digital filter is to reduce the noise by filtering but this effect is offset by the increase in PLL frequency gain caused by its very presence. Disclosure of Invention
An object of the present invention is to provide a low noise fractional -N 15 frequency synthesiser having a continuous tuning range which is greater than obtained with known PLLs.
According to a first aspect of the present invention there is provided a frequency synthesiser comprising a signal input, a sigma-delta modulator coupled to the signal input, a digital filter means coupled to an output of the sigma-delta modulator, and a phase locked loop(PLL) including a frequency divider having a control input coupled to an output of the digital filter means, characterised in that the frequency divider comprises a fractional divider and in that the filter means is configured to increase the number of output slates by one over the number of input states.
According to a second aspect of the present invention there is provided a transmitter comprising dighising means for generating digitised signal input samples, a sigma-delta modulator coupled to a signal output of said digitising means, a digital filter means coupled to an output of the sigma-delta modulator, and a phase locked loopiPlL) including a frequency divider having a control input coupled to an output of the digital filter means, the PLL having an output for a signal at a frequency determined by the PLL, characterised in that the frequency divider comprises a fractional divider and in that the filter means is configured to increase the number of output states by one over the number of input states.

According to a third aspect of the present invention there is provided an integrated circuit comprising the frequency synthesiser in accordance with the first aspect of the present invention.
Compared to the arrangement disclosed in W099/14859, the digital filter is a relatively basic FIR filter having say 2 stages which serves to increase the number of output states to 3 for an input having 2 possible states without disturbing the highly desirable spectral shape of the quantisation noise close to zero frequency. The filter in these circumstances produces no increase in the frequency gain of the PLL and consequently has an insignificant effect on the SIN ratio from the PLL. More significantly, the frequency synthesiser is able to operate on half ratios which have been found to give a 12dB improvement in noise level and also continuous tuning can be achieved because successive groiip_s of 3 half ratios can overlap. The half radios allow the divider output phase to move through an integer multiple of TT radians before the ratio is changed rather than the 2n radians a,s applied in the cited prior art. Hence in an embodiment of the present invention, the reference frequency of the PLL is half the clock frequency of the sigma- delta modulator. By halving the reference frequency it has been found that a 6 dB improvement in noise performance is obtained. Since another 6dB improved is obtained from the step interval between the divider ratios, there is gained a 12 dB improvement in noise level compared to a situatiorl where an adjacent pair of divider ratios is addressed directly by a I -bit sigma-delia modulator.
Brief Description of Drawings
The present invention will now be described, by way of example, with reference to the accompanying drawings, wherein;
Figure 1 is a block schematic diagram of an embodiment of a fracfional- 30 N transmitter suitable for use with a GSM cellular telephone, and
Figure 2 is a tuning diagram illustrating the tuning range of the transmitter shown in Figure L

Modes for Canning Out the Invention
Referring to Figure 1, the transmitter 10 comprises a data source 12 which in the case of GSM comprises data symbols at a data rate of 270.8333 kB/s. Each symbol is represented by a single binary bit which is then scaled and shifted to produce a bipolar stream of signal samples in which logical 1 ' and 0 are respectively assigned to numeric values +1 and -I. The data source is coupled to a Gaussian filter 14 which has a BT factor (bandwidth X bit period) BT = 0.3 and a sampling rate of 2.1667 mega symbols/second (MS/s). After some ampUtude scaling, the output of the filter 14 is a multi-bit, parallel representation equal to the instantaneous frequency deviation of the carrier due to the modulation and as such has dimensions of Hertz.
A 4th order sigma -delta modulator 16 sampled at 52 MS/s is coupled to the output of the filter 14. The modulator 16 is a purely digital element whose effect on its input signal is to apply quantisation with a resolurion of n bits. In the present example n = 1 and the output of the modulator 16 is a binary stream of samples with values ± 1. The samples emerge at a rate equal to a predetermined clock frequency of 52 MHz in this example and their average calculated over an appropriate period of time is a close approximation to the value of the input signal. A DC fine tuning demand signal is applied to an input 17.
A FIR filter 18 having 2 taps is coupled to an output of the sigma -delta modulator 16 to increase the number of output states from the modulator 16 by one additional output state, that is to 3 states +1, 0, -1 without disturbing the highly desirable spectral shape of the quantisation noise close to zero frequency. The three discrete output states map onto three discrete divider ratios, for example 35.0, 34,5 and 34.0, of a fractional divider 20 of a phase locked loop (PLL). The total number of divider ratios of which these three are a subset, is determined primarily by the tuning range requirement.
The PLL fiarther comprises a phase comparator 22 consisting of a 30 multiplier having a first input coupled to a 26 MHz stable reference oscillator 24 and a second

input coupJed to an output of the divider 20. The output from the phase comparator 22 is filtered in a low pass filter 26 having a passband below 400kHz. An integrator 28 and an amplifier 30 shunting the integrator 28 form a narrowband PLL is coupled between an output of the low pass filter 26 and a tran:smitter voltage controlled oscillator (TxVCO) 32. The output of the TxVCO 32 is coupled to the input of the divider 20 and to a power amplifier 34. An antenna 36 or other signal propagation means or signal storage means (not shown) is coupled to an output of the power amplifier 34. As the basic operation of the PLL frequency synthesiser is well known, it will not be described.
A consequence of using divider ratios which have an incremental step 10 of 0.5 is that the divider 20 is able to switch ratio after its output has moved through an integer multiple of only % radians rather than 2TI which applies when using integer dividers. Hence, requests for a particular ratio made by a demand signal on the input 17 to the sigma -delta modulator 16 can be acted upon twice in every cycle of the divider output and therefore twice in every cycle of th-3 26 MHz reference oscillator 24. This means that the reference frequency is able to be half of the frequency of the sigma -delta clock.
By halving the reference frequency to a value of 26 MHz produces a 6dB improvement in noise performance and another 6dB improvement comes from halving the step interval between the divider ratios making a total of I2dB altogether.
Figure 2 illustrates the tuning range which can be obtained by having three active divider ratios, each separated by 0,5. For a fracfional divider the tuning range,
/liine = Q-7j:/clk'Niapb
where Ntap, is the number of taps in the FIR filter and the factor of 0.7 is imposed by the sigma -delta modulator 16.

Thus for fcik = 52MHz and Njap, = 1, /mp^ = 9.IMHz. However when Niap^^ 2, /i^ne = 18.2MHz. Thus by addressing a set of three divider ratios such as N, N- 0.5 and N-1 with the 2 tap FIR fihcr 18 {diagram A), it is possible to have a tuning range Rl which covers a frequency band the lower end of which overlaps the higher end of an adjacent tuning range R2 band corresponding to the ratios N -0.5, N -1 and N -1.5 (diagram B). With this arrangement there are no gaps in the coverage and the tuning range is limited by only the available number of divider ratios and the tuning capability of the TxVCO 32.
Referring back to Figure 1, the fine tuning range for divider ratios of 35.0. 34.5 and 34.0 is 18 MHz, that is 888 to 906 MHz. The resolution with which this tuning can be set depends on the word length, P, used at the input to the sigma -delta modulator 16. With a 15 -bit word length, the frequency resolution f,^^ will be:
fr,,^ 2xfr,r = 2 X 26000 = l,587itHz (2^-1) (2'^-l)
For coarse tuning a function block 38 is provided which in response to a coarse tuning demand on an input 40 calculates the base divider ratio N needed to place the TxVCO 32 in the most appropriate band encompassing the desired frequency. In the present implementation, a set of size consecutive divider ratios should offer a tuning range in excess of 45 MHz.
For convenience of description the present invention has been described with reference to the requirements of the GSM cellular telephone system but it is to be understood that the present invention may be applied to frequency synthesisers operating with other systems, especially TDMA systems.
The architecture illustrated in Figure 1 is highly digitised making it attractive for integration in CMOS technology. It requires no ADCs or DACs, other than as required by the sigma-delta modulator, and no off-chip filters.

In the present specification and claims the word "a" or "an" preceding an element does not exclude the presence of a plurality of such elements. Further, the word "comprising" does not exclude the presence of other elements or steps than those listed.
From reading the present disclosure, other modifications will be apparent to persons skilled in the art: Such modifications may involve IJther features which are already known in the design, manufacture and use of frequency synthesisers, transmitters including the frequency synthesisers and components therefor and which may be used instead of or in addition to features already described herein.
Industrial Applicability
Fractional -N frequency synthesiser for use in cellular telephones and the like.


WE CLAIM :
1. A frequency synthesizer comprising a signal input, a sigma-delta modulator (16) coupled to the signal input, a digital filter means (18) coupled to an output of the sigma-delta modulator (16), and a phase locked loop (PLL) having a frequency divider (20) having a control input coupled to an output of the digital filter means (18), wherein the frequency divider (20) comprises a fractional divider and in that the filter means (18) is configured to increase the number of output states by one over the number of input states.
2. The frequency synthesiser as claimed in claim 1, wherein the number of output states is 3.
3. The frequency synthesiser as claimed in claim 1 or 2, wherein the sigma-delta modulator (16) has a clock signal generator having a frequency / and in that the PLL has a reference oscillator (24) having a frequency of//2.
4. A transmitter (10) comprising digitizing means (12; 14) for generating digitised signal input samples, a sigma-delta modulator (16) coupled to a signal output of said digitising means, a digital filter means (18) coupled to an output of the sigma-delta modulator (16), and a phase locked loop (PLL) having a frequency divider (20) having a control input coupled to an output of the digital fitter means (18), the PLL having an output for a signal at a frequency determined by the PLL, wherein the frequency divider (20) comprises a fracdonal divider and in that the filter means (18) is configured to increase the number of output states by one over the number of input states.
5. The transmitter as claimed in claim 4, wherein the number of output states is 3.

6. The transmitter as claimed in claim 4 or 5, wherein the sigma-deha modulator (16) has a clock signal generator having a frequency / and in that the PLL has a reference oscillator (24) having an frequency //2.
7. An integrated circuit comprising a frequency synthesizer as claimed in claim 1, 2 or 3.


Documents:

in-pct-2001-0505-che abstract duplicate.pdf

in-pct-2001-0505-che abstract.pdf

in-pct-2001-0505-che claims duplicate.pdf

in-pct-2001-0505-che claims.pdf

in-pct-2001-0505-che correspondence-others.pdf

in-pct-2001-0505-che correspondence-po.pdf

in-pct-2001-0505-che description (complete) duplicate.pdf

in-pct-2001-0505-che description (complete).pdf

in-pct-2001-0505-che drawings.pdf

in-pct-2001-0505-che form-1.pdf

in-pct-2001-0505-che form-19.pdf

in-pct-2001-0505-che form-26.pdf

in-pct-2001-0505-che form-3.pdf

in-pct-2001-0505-che form-5.pdf

in-pct-2001-0505-che others.pdf

in-pct-2001-0505-che pct.pdf

in-pct-2001-0505-che petition.pdf


Patent Number 201839
Indian Patent Application Number IN/PCT/2001/505/CHE
PG Journal Number 30/2009
Publication Date 24-Jul-2009
Grant Date
Date of Filing 09-Apr-2001
Name of Patentee KONINKLIJKE PHILIPS ELECTRONICS N.V.
Applicant Address GROENEWOUDSEWEG 1, NL-5621 BA EINDHOVEN
Inventors:
# Inventor's Name Inventor's Address
1 MINNIS, BRIAN, J PROF HOLSTLAAN 6, NL-5656 AA EINDHOVEN
PCT International Classification Number H03L7/197
PCT International Application Number PCT/EP00/07300
PCT International Filing date 2000-07-28
PCT Conventions:
# PCT Application Number Date of Convention Priority Country
1 9918732.0 1999-08-10 U.K.