COMMERCIAL FREQUENCY-SYNTHESIZER OF 118-GHZ-178-GHZ RANGE

This paper is concerned with description of development of commercial millimeterwave frequency synthesizer promised by authors in previous paper [1]. Synthesizer described has highest for commercial synthesizers at the moment frequency range 118 GHz - 178 GHz and due to the use in it of Russian - made Backward Wave Oscillator (BWO) radiation source of the [2] type has continuous tunability range as broad as 60 GHz and significant - from 3 to 10 mW - output power in the whole range covered. Minimal frequency step is 100 Hz. Synthesizer is fully microprocessor - or PC - (through IEEE-488) controlled. Mentioned are other members of this synthesizer family (37 - 53 GHz, 53 - 78 GHz, 78 - 118 GHz) also now in production (general information about development of Russian frequency synthesizers from 1.07 GHz up to 118.1 GHz can be found in [3]). Possibility of further extension of frequency range up to 256 GHz in serial and up to 1 THz in laboratory versions (see [4]) is considered.