A low-power low-noise VCO with nearly constant Kvco for UHF RFID transceivers

Author

Shuai Liu ; Xiaosong Wang ; Xiaozhe Chen ; Xiaohua Fan ; Haiying Zhang

Author_Institution

Inst. of Microelectron., Beijing, China

fYear

2012

Firstpage

1

Lastpage

2

Abstract

In this paper a low-power low phase noise VCO with nearly constant K_VCO for UHF RFID transceivers is presented. To achieve a wide tuning range while maintaining a low K_VCO and phase noise, a 6 bit digital controlled capacitor array is used. To achieve a nearly constant K_VCO in a wide tuning range, an improved 3 bit digital controlled varactor array is proposed. With the TSMC 0.18 μ m 1p6m RF CMOS process, the simulated K_VCO is less than 30MHz/V in a 20% tuning range. The phase noise is lower than -127 dBc/Hz @1MHz offset at 1.8 GHz. At the same time, the K_VCO variation is ±2% in a single sub-band and the overall variation is lower than ±7% within the operation frequency of interest. The VCO consumes 3.5 mA current under 1.8 V supply voltage.

Keywords

CMOS analogue integrated circuits; UHF oscillators; capacitors; phase noise; radio transceivers; radiofrequency identification; varactors; voltage-controlled oscillators; TSMC 1p6m RF CMOS process; UHF RFID transceivers; current 3.5 mA; digital controlled capacitor array; digital controlled varactor array; low-power low phase noise VCO; size 0.18 mum; voltage 1.8 V; word length 3 bit; word length 6 bit; Arrays; Phase noise; Radiofrequency identification; Transceivers; Tuning; Varactors; Voltage-controlled oscillators; UHF RFID; Varactor array; constant KVCO; distributed biased varactor array unit; low phase noise; wideband;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Electron Devices and Solid State Circuit (EDSSC), 2012 IEEE International Conference on

Conference_Location

Bangkok

Print_ISBN

978-1-4673-5694-7

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/EDSSC.2012.6482799

Filename

6482799