Non-uniform coarse dco steps for improved chirp linearity

An apparatus comprising:

• a phase-locked loop including an oscillator, the oscillator including a coarse bank of capacitors, a first fine bank of capacitors, and a second fine bank of capacitors;
• a chirp controller to cause the phase-locked loop to provide an output signal with a plurality of frequencies during a chirp operation;
• and
• wherein during the chirp operation the chirp controller supplies the oscillator with control codes to the first fine bank of capacitors and to the coarse bank of capacitors that cause the phase-locked loop to utilize non-uniform coarse frequency steps to generate the output signal.

A method comprising:

• generating an output signal of an oscillator of a phase-locked loop (PLL) for use in a chirp operation;
• the oscillator using non-uniform coarse frequency steps to generate the output signal, each of the non-uniform coarse frequency steps generated using a coarse capacitance of a coarse capacitor bank in the oscillator in combination with a randomly selected fine capacitance of a first fine capacitor bank in the oscillator;
• and
• the oscillator using a second fine capacitor bank to adjust a frequency of the output signal between the non-uniform coarse frequency steps.