SBAA661 February   2025 LMX1205

 

  1.   1
  2.   Abstract
  3.   Trademarks
  4. 1Flicker Noise, Noise Floor, and Total Noise
    1. 1.1 Flicker Noise
    2. 1.2 Noise Floor
    3. 1.3 Total Noise
  5. 2Finding the Slew Rate
    1. 2.1 Finding the Slew Rate With an Oscilloscope
    2. 2.2 Calculating the Slew Rate From Power and Frequency
  6. 3Impact of Slew Rate on Phase Noise
    1. 3.1 Modeling of Input Clock Slew Rate, Inherent Device Noise, and Output Jitter
    2. 3.2 Slew Rate Impact on Flicker Noise and Noise Floor
  7. 4Application of Slew Rate Rules to PLL Synthesizers
    1. 4.1 PLL Flicker Noise
    2. 4.2 PLL Figure of Merit
    3. 4.3 Other Areas in PLLs Where Slew Rate has an Impact on Performance
    4. 4.4 Improving PLL Slew Rate for Better Performance
  8. 5Application of Slew Rate Rules to Data Converters
  9. 6Summary
  10. 7References
  11.   Appendix A: Relating Slew Rate, Power, and Frequency
  12.   Appendix B: Relating Slew Rate, Frequency, Jitter, and Phase Noise
  13.   Appendix C: Equations for Data Converters
    1. 8.1 Relating Sampled Signal Slew Rate to SNR
    2. 8.2 Justification That SNR Decreases 1dB per 1dB With Input Power for Slew Rate Limited Case
  14.   Appendix D: Calculations for Data Converter Example

Abstract

The input clock slew rate can have a significant impact on the phase noise and signal to noise ratio for PLLs (phased locked loops), buffers, and data converters The best performance is obtained when the input clock slew rate is sufficiently high. This paper explores why this is the case and quantifies how phase noise is related to slew rate, power, and frequency using both a theoretical approached, as well as, measured results.