The 15th IEEE International Conference on Electron Devices and Solid-State Circuits (EDSSC)

524 / 2019-03-07 10:05:21

A 1.58-mW 14-GHz Class-BC Amplitude-Regulated Hybrid VCO with 58.9% Tuning Range and 201-dB FoMT

Current-reused,Class-B/C,phase noise,startup,voltage-controlled oscillator,amplitude imbalance,low power

Plenary track > RF & Microwave

This paper presents a current-reused Class-B/C hybrid voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO) with low-power consumption, wide tuning range, balanced differential output and robust startup. The amplitude-regulated technique which utilizes a capacitor connected to the central tap of the inductor is adopted to mitigate the issue of the imbalance output over wide-band current-reused VCO. The 3-bit digitally controlled capacitor array is used to achieve wide tuning range with moderate VCO tuning gain. The VCO is designed in 40-nm CMOS process with 1.2-V supply. Simulation results shows 58.9% frequency tuning range (13.74–25.12GHz), phase noise of −104.64dBc/Hz@1MHz at 14-GHz output, and figure-of-merit (FoMT) of −201 dBc/Hz.