Method and apparatus for generating a signal having at least one desired output frequency utilizing a bank of vibrating micromechanical devices
First Claim
1. A method for generating a signal having at least one desired output frequency in a system in response to a tuning voltage and without the need for a phase-locking circuit, the method comprising:
- providing a bank of micromechanical devices wherein each of the devices is switchable between on and off states and tunable;
vibrating one or more of the devices so that each vibrating device generates a signal having an output frequency; and
controllably switching and tuning one or more of the vibrating devices to generate a signal having the at least one desired output frequency in response to the tuning voltage.
2 Assignments
0 Petitions
Accused Products
Abstract
Several MEMS-based methods and architectures which utilize vibrating micromechanical resonators in circuits to implement filtering, mixing, frequency reference and amplifying functions are provided. A method and apparatus are shown for generating a signal having at least one desired output frequency such as LO frequency in an RF subsystem in response to a tuning voltage and without the need for a phase-locking circuit. One of the primary benefits of the use of such architectures is a savings in power consumption by trading power for high selectivity (i.e., high Q). Consequently, the present invention relies on the use of a large number of micromechanical links in SSI networks to implement signal processing functions with basically zero DC power consumption.
209 Citations
25 Claims
-
1. A method for generating a signal having at least one desired output frequency in a system in response to a tuning voltage and without the need for a phase-locking circuit, the method comprising:
-
providing a bank of micromechanical devices wherein each of the devices is switchable between on and off states and tunable;
vibrating one or more of the devices so that each vibrating device generates a signal having an output frequency; and
controllably switching and tuning one or more of the vibrating devices to generate a signal having the at least one desired output frequency in response to the tuning voltage. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 17)
-
-
11. A local oscillator synthesizer apparatus for generating a signal having at least one desired output frequency in a system in response to a tuning voltage and without the need for a phase-locking circuit, the apparatus comprising:
-
a parallel bank of micromechanical resonators, each of the resonators corresponding to a frequency and wherein each of the resonators is switchable between on and off states and tunable; and
a controller for controllably switching and tuning at least one desired resonator of the bank of resonators to thereby provide frequency selection. - View Dependent Claims (12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 18)
the appropriate bias voltage changes the impedance to select the at least one desired resonator.
-
-
19. A method for generating a signal in response to a control voltage, the method comprising:
-
providing a plurality of micromechanical resonator devices, each micromechanical resonator device having an input, an output, and an impedance between the input and the output and responsive to the control voltage;
controllably selecting a desired micromechanical resonator device of the plurality of micromechanical resonator devices by providing the control voltage to the desired micromechanical resonator device to modify the impedance of the desired micromechanical resonator device and thereby enable the desired micromechanical resonator device for operation; and
driving the desired micromechanical resonator device to generate the signal. - View Dependent Claims (20)
-
-
21. The method as claimed in claim 21 wherein the impedance of a micromechanical resonator device of the plurality of micromechanical resonator devices other than the desired micromechanical resonator device is that of a substantially open circuit to input signals provided to the input thereof.
-
22. An apparatus for generating a signal having an output frequency, the apparatus comprising:
-
a plurality of micromechanical resonator devices wherein each micromechanical resonator device has an input, an output, and an impedance between the input and the output; and
a controller that generates a control signal to modify the impedance of a desired micromechanical resonator device of the plurality of micromechanical resonator devices to select the desired micromechanical resonator device for generation of the signal. - View Dependent Claims (23, 24, 25)
-
Specification