Patent ID: 8005447

Claim:
An apparatus for tuning a voltage-controlled oscillator within a receiver, the apparatus comprising: first tuning circuitry operable to finely tune the voltage controlled oscillator as a function of a given signal input to the first tuning circuitry; second tuning circuitry operable to coarsely tune the voltage controlled oscillator as a function of the given signal input, wherein the given signal input is input to the second tuning circuitry, wherein the first and second circuitries are operable to, respectively, finely and coarsely tune the voltage-controlled oscillator simultaneously; and a common circuit, wherein the common circuit comprises: a variable divider for dividing a signal output from the voltage-controlled oscillator; a mash modulator, coupled to the variable divider, for pseudo-randomly altering a divide-by ratio of the variable divider; and a phase detector, coupled to the variable divider and the first and second tuning circuits, for comparing a phase of a reference signal to a phase of the signal output from the voltage-controlled oscillator.