A HIGH-SPEED DIRECT FREQUENCY-SYNTHESIZER

- This paper describes a UHF direct frequency synthesizer (DFS), which is primarily intended for radar and electronic warfare applications. The device generates square-, sine-, and triangle-wave outputs, true and complement, in-phase and quadrature, over the range 1 Hz to 500 MHz. It is a fully integrated design, including two digital-to-analog converters (DAC's) which each have a faster operating specification than any DAC currently available. The circuit is composed of a number of structured circuit blocks, each of which can be tested independently on the chip. This approach has benefits both during device evaluation and as an aid to minimizing production test times. © 1990 IEEE