Frequency delta sigma modulation (FDSM) is a unique analog to digital conversion technique featuring large dynamic range with wide frequency band width. It can be used for high performance digital-output sensors, if the oscillator in the FDSM is replaced by a variable frequency oscillator whose frequency depends on a certain external physical quantity. One of the most important parameters governing the performance of these sensors is a phase noise of the oscillator. The phase noise is an essential error source in the FDSM, and it is quite important for this type of sensors because they use a high frequency oscillator and an extremely large oversampling ratio. In this paper, we will discuss the quantitative effects of the phase noise on the FDSM output on the basis of a simple model. The model was validated with experiments for three types of oscillators.

The 1-bit band-pass delta-sigma modulator (BP-DSM) achieves high resolution by using the oversampling technique. This method allows direct RF signal transmission from a digitally modulated signal, using a 1-bit digital pulse train. However, it has been previously reported that the adjacent channel leakage ratio (ACLR) in a target frequency band degrades due to the pulse transition mismatch between rising and falling waveforms in the time domain. This paper clarifies that the spurious distortion in BP-DSM is caused by the asymmetricity of the waveform about the center of an eye pattern in the time axis, and proposes a 1-bit BP-DSM with the compensator consisting of a fractional delay filter and a binary data differentiator to cancel out the asymmetry in the target frequency band. This can accurately provide a wideband cancellation signal with more than 100MHz bandwidth, including the adjacent channel, within 50dB power dynamic range. Using long term evolution (LTE) signals with 5MHz bandwidth at 0.8GHz, we simulated the spurious distortion, performing various combinations of rising and falling times in the eye pattern, and the proposed 1-bit BP-DSM always achieved high ACLR, up to 60dB, in 140MHz bandwidth, under all conditions.