  We investigate the effect of time-correlated noise on the phase fluctuations
of nonlinear oscillators. The analysis is based on a methodology that
transforms a system subject to colored noise, modeled as an Ornstein-Uhlenbeck
process, into an equivalent system subject to white Gaussian noise. A
description in terms of phase and amplitude deviation is given for the
transformed system. Using stochastic averaging technique, the equations are
reduced to a phase model that can be analyzed to characterize phase noise. We
find that phase noise is a drift-diffusion process, with a noise-induced
frequency shift related to the variance and to the correlation time of colored
noise. The proposed approach improves the accuracy of previous phase reduced
models.
