About the speaker
Michael Peter Kennedy (Fellow, IEEE) is the Head of electronic engineering, School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at the University College Dublin. He has been the Scientific Director of the Microelectronic Circuits Centre, Ireland, since 2010. He has taught nonlinear dynamics and delta-sigma modulation in China, England, Greece, Hungary, Italy, South Korea, Spain, Switzerland, and USA. He has over 400 publications in the area of nonlinear circuits. He was elected to membership of the Royal Irish Academy (RIA) in 2004, served as a RIA Policy and International Relations Secretary from 2012 to 2016, and the President from 2017 to 2020. He was also awarded the IEEE Third Millennium Medal, the IEEE Circuits and Systems Society Golden Jubilee Medal in 2000, and the Inaugural Parson’s Medal for Engineering Sciences by RIA in 2001.
Abstract
Frequency synthesizers are universally used in a wide range of applications including clocking, communications, instrumentation, and radar. The most common architecture is the fractional-N frequency synthesizer which uses a nonlinear finite state machine to produce the desired frequency. Both the finite state machine itself and interaction between its output and nonlinearities in the implementation can lead to unwanted spurious periodic output frequency components (spurs) and excess noise. Understanding of the origins of these effects has led to the design of novel mitigation strategies. This talk will explain the underlying issues, explain recent innovations, and highlight open problems.