A low phase noise quadrature LC VCO in CMOS technology

Author

Sze, Bour-Yi ; Ho, Chih-Long

Author_Institution

VIA Technol. Inc., Taipei, Taiwan

fYear

2005

Firstpage

649

Lastpage

652

Abstract

A quadrature LC VCO is designed and fabricated using a standard 0.18 μm CMOS process. The oscillation frequency can be tuned from 1400 to 1530 MHz through a 2-bit switched capacitor array. The measured free running phase noise is -125.04 dBc/Hz at 600 kHz offset from the 1.52 GHz carrier. The measured harmonic distortion is below -26 dBc. The designed VCO has achieved the figure of merit (FOM) of -185.4 dBc/Hz, which is the best among the compared VCOs with on-chip inductors using a standard CMOS process.

Keywords

CMOS analogue integrated circuits; UHF oscillators; harmonic distortion; integrated circuit design; nonlinear network synthesis; phase noise; switched capacitor networks; voltage-controlled oscillators; 0.18 micron; 1400 to 1530 MHz; CMOS technology; figure of merit; harmonic distortion; low phase noise quadrature LC VCO; on-chip inductors; oscillation frequency tuning; switched capacitor array; CMOS process; CMOS technology; Capacitors; Distortion measurement; Frequency; Harmonic distortion; Noise measurement; Phase measurement; Phase noise; Voltage-controlled oscillators;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Radio Frequency integrated Circuits (RFIC) Symposium, 2005. Digest of Papers. 2005 IEEE

ISSN

1529-2517

Print_ISBN

0-7803-8983-2

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/RFIC.2005.1489897

Filename

1489897