Wine - Glass Micromechanical - Disk Reference Oscillator

The quartz crystal used in the reference oscillator in a wireless communication transceiver is among the most difficult to integrate on chip. On-chip devices capable of matching its Q (on the order of 10,000) and temperature stability (<35ppm over 0-70C) are generally unavailable. Recently, an on-chip vibrating clamped-clamped beam (CC-beam) micromechanical resonator based on MEMS technology has been demonstrated at 10MHz with a Q of 4,000 and a frequency stability of 34ppm [1] over 070C, which matches that of quartz. Unfortunately, a recently demonstrated 10MHz oscillator using a wide-beam variant of this resonator [2] exhibits a far-from-carrier phase noise of only -120dBc/Hz—a value caused mainly by the insufficient power handling ability of the CC-beam micromechanical resonator device used [3].