ABSTRACT
This chapter starts with a brief review of the fundamental phase noise theory, and examines the particular phase noise process in soliton oscillators, including contributions from direct phase perturbations and indirect phase errors caused by amplitude-to-phase conversion. It compares by both analytical calculations and experiments, the phase noise of soliton oscillator with other oscillators based on linear transmission lines, and discusses key design strategies for minimizing the phase noise of soliton oscillators. Phase noise in self-sustained oscillators causes timing inaccuracy or frequency instability, and gives rise to spectral linewidth broadening of oscillator's output. The calculation of the direct phase perturbation by the distributed noise runs in two steps. First, by analyzing the oscillator dynamics in the presence of the noise identifies the vector representing the noise perturbation. Second, project this noise perturbation vector onto the tangential direction of the limit cycle to calculate the phase error.
