Effects of local oscillator phase noise on submillimeter-wave spectrometer performance

We have analyzed the effects of LO phase noise on submillimeter-wave (submm) spectrometers. The phase error integrated from half the spectrometer bandwidth must be <; 45 degrees to not distort the spectrometer response. For a phase noise spectrum with f-3 rolloff, the noise level at 1 MHz offset must be <; -96 dBc for a 100 kHz spectrometer channel width.