Translation Loops

Analog Devices fully integrated and ready to use translation loop (also known as an offset loop) System in Package (SiP) are used for frequency synthesis in highly jitter sensitive applications, and reduce board space and complexity compared to traditional discrete translation loop solutions designed on a PCB. Time to market is significantly reduced by taking advantage of this highly integrated solution with in-package circuitry and enhanced isolation that attenuate spurious components. Analog Devices translation loop solutions provide a frequency synthesis solution for engineers designing highly competitive systems. Analog Devices’ offset loop devices require an external Phase and Frequency Detector (PFD) and an external local oscillator (LO) to form a frequency synthesis solution. The solutions provide instrument grade performance in a small form factor. Analog Devices translation loops implement an integrated down-conversion mixing stage in the feedback loop. This sets the loop gain to 1 and minimizes the in-band phase noise. By combining the frequency down-conversion stage and Analog Devices’ lowest noise integrated wideband VCO technology, these solutions offer sub-10fs rms wideband jitter performance. The output jitter performance is largely dependent on the performance of the external offset LO.