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Preliminary Studies on Injection Locking of Oscillators

Article · January 2015

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IJECT Vol. 6, Issue 1, Spl- 1 Jan - March 2015 ISSN : 2230-7109 (Online) | ISSN : 2230-9543 (Print)

Preliminary Studies on Injection Locking of Oscillators

1
H Kalita, 1S K Pandey, 1A Saikia, 1U Choudhury, 1R C Sah, 1A Mukherjee
1
Dept. of ECE, Central Institute of Technology, Kokrajhar, Assam, India

Abstract shows an injection synchronized transistorized oscillator. The

Injection locking characteristics of oscillators are reviewed both
theoretically and experimentally. Theoretical results coupled with
experimental findings are presented. A simple method of deriving tank operates at the resonance frequency , thus
the equation for locking range is reported. contributing no phase shift at this frequency and the ideal inverting
buffer follows the transistor to create a total phase shift of 360°
Keywords around the feedback loop. Now when an additional phase shift ‘
Injection Locking, Locking Range Equation, Nonlinearity ’ is inserted in the loop, the circuit can no longer oscillate at ‘ ’,
because the total phase shift at this frequency deviates from 360°
I. Introduction by ‘ ’. Hence the oscillation frequency must change itself to a
A self oscillating system or a self-oscillator is a primary source new value ‘ ’ such that the tank contributes enough phase shift
of oscillations operating under self-exciting conditions. Any to cancel the effect of ‘ ’. In Fig. 1, the additional phase shift has
oscillator is a nonlinear system converting the dc power of a been realized by adding a sinusoidal injection current ‘ I inj ’ to the
source into ac energy. At the moment of starting the self-oscillator, collector of the transistor ‘T’. If the amplitude and frequency of
free oscillations are generated in its oscillatory system due to ‘ I inj ’ are chosen properly, then the circuit will oscillate at ‘
switching on the power source, breaking the circuits, electric ’ rather than at ‘ ’ and injection locking occurs.
fluctuations etc. The positive feedback amplifies these initial
conditions, in which case during the initial stage of the process,
when the amplitudes are small, we may consider the system to
be linear as the amplification is practically linear. From energy
considerations, the process which increases the amplitudes is
explained by the fact that the amount of energy supplied by the
amplifier to the inertia load network is greater than the amount of
energy dissipated in the system. The nonlinearity of the system
(curvature of the current-voltage characteristic of the amplifying
element) begins to manifest itself with the rise of the amplitudes,
and consequently the gain of the system drops. The amplitudes
stop increasing when the amplification is reduced to the level
at which the damping of the oscillations in the load circuit is
balanced; in this case the energy supplied by the amplifier per
period proves to be equal to the energy consumed in the circuit
load during the same time. Fig. 1: Frequency Shifting Arrangement by Injection
An oscillator operating under steady-state conditions is a Synchronization
conventional nonlinear amplifier excited by the oscillations
produced in the oscillator itself; these oscillations are fed from the II. Derivation of the Locking Equation
oscillatory system of the amplifier and applied to its input through Locking range refers to the range of frequencies of ‘ ’ across
a feedback loop. When the amplitude and phase of oscillations which injection locking holds. To match the increasingly greater
satisfy certain conditions, the behavior of a self-oscillator is phase shift introduced by the tank, the angle between the ‘ I osc
identical to that of a separately excited oscillator. In the last ’ and ‘ IT ’ must also increase, requiring that ‘ I osc ’ will rotate
stage of the transient conditions the behavior of the oscillator is anticlockwise. Using trigonometric identity, it is not difficult to
determined mainly by the nonlinear character of the system, so show that
that the steady state of the oscillator cannot be described without
taking the nonlinearity into account.
Injection locking becomes useful in a number of applications
including frequency division [1], quadrature generation [2],
[3] and oscillators with finer phase separations [4]. However,
IT
injection pulling on the other hand typically proves undesirable. I osc f 0
For example, in a broadband transceiver [5], the two voltage
controlled oscillators may pull each other as a result of substrate
coupling.
In this paper, we have derived the locking equation for an injection
synchronized oscillator using two approaches. The first method
is based on simple phasor algebra and the second one is derived
q
using the conventional circuit theory approach. The locking range
of such an oscillator is derived and experimental results showing I inj
the variation of frequency detuning with injection amplitude and
locking range have been presented. The circuit shown in Fig. 1 Fig. 2: Phasor Diagram of Oscillator

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ISSN : 2230-7109 (Online) | ISSN : 2230-9543 (Print) IJECT Vol. 6, Issue 1, Spl-1 Jan - March 2015

where ‘ ∆w0 ’ is open-loop frequency error and (4) is the famous

Adler’s equation [6].

III. Oscillator Under Weak Injection

Again,
R C L v0 (t )
I inj

Fig. 3: Equivalent Circuit Diagram of a Negative Differential

Conductance Oscillator With Injection

In the following analysis, we take a negative differential

conductance oscillator in presence of an injection signal ‘ I inj (t ) '.
A second-order parallel tank circuit consisting of ‘ L ’, ‘ C ’ and Here, ' R ' accounts for the losses in the tank circuit and we model
‘ R ’ exhibits an impedance [7] of the oscillator as a one-port circuit consisting of a parallel tank
circuit and a non-linear element ' GNL '. Since a linear oscillator
does not injection lock, the non-linearity in the circuit will aid the
process of injection locking. Typically the non-linearity in Fig. 3
arises because of the non-linearities present in the active core of
the transistor [8] in Fig.1.
Application of Kirchhoff ’s current law, one gets
dv0 I inj 1 v G
Thus the phase shift introduced by the tank circuit near resonance
is given by dt
= −
C LC ∫ v0 dt − 0 + NL v0
RC C
2
d v v  1  dv dI
C 20 + 0 − GNL −  0 = inj (5)
dt L  R  dt dt
The output of the oscillator and the synchronizing signal are taken

as and ; where ' V (t ) ' is the

envelope of the oscillator output and ' ' is the output phase
modulation because of the synchronizing signal .
where the following simplifications have been used :

Hence equating (2) with the phase shift introduced by the circuit,
one gets

Using these results in (5), one gets

I inj
Since, � 1 , (3) reduces to
I osc

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IJECT Vol. 6, Issue 1, Spl- 1 Jan - March 2015 ISSN : 2230-7109 (Online) | ISSN : 2230-9543 (Print)

i.e., (9)
Eqn. (9) is the Adler’s equation derived in (4) by a somewhat
different approach.

In the steady state, gives

Equating the real and imaginary parts, it is not difficult to show

that the ideal locking or synchronizing range of the oscillator.
P a ra llel T uned C ircuit with Non-linea rity (C onducta nce)

1
-K -
(6) s
Integra tor 1/R C 1
1 O ut1
-K -
s Add
Integra tor1 1/L C

Add1

and f(u)

Non linea rity

1 1
Inj S igna l
1/C

(7) Fig. 4: Experimental Set Up

IV. Results and Discussions

The oscillator output phase variation and its steady state value is
Now the following assumptions are made in order to simplify (6) shown in Fig. 5. The result is obtained by solving (9). The free
and (7) : (i) since ‘ V (t ) ' and ' ' are slowly varying functions running frequency of the oscillator is 45 Hz and is shown in Fig.
6. The experimental validation is done with the help of MATLAB
1  dV 
of time,
  � 1 and , SIMULINK and is shown in Fig. 4. In Fig. 7 the injection signal
V (t )  dt  frequency is varied (hence the frequency detuning) and the
corresponding injection signal amplitude is noted at the verge
(ii) the magnitude of the oscillator amplitude envelope is of synchronization, shown in table-1. Finally, Fig. 8 shows the
approximately the tank peak current produced by variation of locking range with the frequency detuning when the
the ' −GNL ' multiplied by the tank resistance ' R ', i.e., injection signal amplitude is kept fixed at 150.
V = I osc × R = I osc × Qw0 L ,
max 0.4
(iii) , and (iv) . Hence, (7)
Oscillator output phase ---->

can be written as
0.3

0.2

It is worthwhile to mention that (8) gives the behavior of the 0.1

envelope of the oscillator output. Further, (6) gives

0
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8

Time --->
Fig. 5: Oscillator Output Phase Variation

and substituting one gets

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ISSN : 2230-7109 (Online) | ISSN : 2230-9543 (Print) IJECT Vol. 6, Issue 1, Spl-1 Jan - March 2015

[4] J. Kim, B. Kim,“A low phase noise CMOS LC oscillator

with a ring structure”, In IEEE ISSCC Dig. Tech. Papers,
Feb. 2000, pp. 430–431.
[5] B. Razavi,“A study of injection locking and pulling in
oscillators”, IEEE J. Solid-State Circuits, Vol. 39, No. 9,
pp. 1415–1424, Sept. 2004.
[6] R. Adler,“A study of locking phenomena in oscillators”, Proc.
IEEE, Vol. 61, pp. 1380–1385, Oct. 1973.
[7] L. J. Paciorek,“Injection locking of oscillators”, Proc. IEEE,
Vol. 53, pp. 1723–1727, Nov. 1965.
[8] I.Ali, A. Banerjee, A. Mukherjee, B.N. Biswas,“Study of
Injection Locking with Amplitude Perturbation and its effect
Fig. 6: Spectrum of Free Running Oscillator on Pulling of Oscillators”, IEEE Trans. on CAS-1, Regular
papers, Vol. 59, No.1, pp. 137-147, Jan.2012.
Table 1: Experimental Data for Frequency Detuning With Injection
Amplitude
Frequency detuning in Hz Injection Amplitude
1 25
3 73
5 117
7 165

Fig. 7: Frequency Detuning With Injection Amplitude

Fig. 8: Frequency Detuning With Locking Range

V. Acknowledgement
The authors are thankful to the management of Central Institute of
Technology, Assam, India for giving an opportunity for carrying
out this work.

References
[1] E. Normann,“The inductance-capacitance oscillator as a
frequency divider”, In Proc. IRE, Vol. 24, Oct. 1946, pp.
799–803.
[2] C. J. M.Verhoeven,“Ahigh-frequency electronically tunable
quadrature oscillator”, IEEE J. Solid-State Circuits, Vol. 27,
pp. 1097–1100, July 1992.
[3] A. Rofougaran et al.,“A 900 MHz CMOS LC oscillator with
quadrature outputs”, In IEEE ISSCC Dig. Tech. Papers, Feb.
1996, pp. 392–393.

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