A voltage controlled oscillation device includes a voltage controlled oscillator, fixed-frequency oscillator, frequency mixer, and frequency selector. The voltage controlled oscillator changes the output signal frequency in the microwave band in accordance with the input voltage of a frequency control signal. The fixed-frequency oscillator has a fixed oscillation frequency higher than that of the voltage controlled oscillator. The frequency mixer mixes the output signal from the fixed-frequency oscillator and the output signal from the voltage controlled oscillator and outputs the sum frequency and difference frequency between the two signals. The frequency selector selects and outputs one of the sum frequency and difference frequency contained in the output signal from the frequency mixer.
A chopper-direct-conversion (CDC) radio receiver includes a phase-alternating mixer receiving an antenna input signal and at least one local oscillator signal and generating a double sideband signal in a single mixing step. The phase-alternating mixer may be implemented by two parallel mixers each mixing the input signal with one of two local oscillator signals and an adder receiving and summing outputs from the two parallel mixers, by a track-and-hold circuit sampling the input signal based upon the local oscillator signal, or by a window averaging circuit averaging the input signal across a period of the local oscillator signal. The CDC architecture is suitable for fabrication on a single chip and offers solutions to virtually all problems found in conventional direct-conversion receivers.
