Phase-Locked Loop Behavior near Threshold

The phase-locked loop behavior is analyzed following the quasilinearization Booton's method. When the loop is locked on an unmodulated input signal with a static phase error, the phase detector nonlinearity produces an interaction between the static phase error and the voltage-controlled-oscillator (VCO) noise phase fluctuations. Formulas allowing one to compute the static phase error increase and the VCO phase variance increase are derived. When the input signal is phase modulated, there is an interaction between the static phase error, the VCO noise phase fluctuations, and the input signal phase modulation. Formulas are obtained that allow one to compute the loop loss of performances (static phase error increase and VCO phase variance increase) and the coherent phase demodulator output signal-to-noise ratio decrease. Finally, a slight modification to Booton's procedure is proposed, leading to results in better agreement with experimental data.