A wide tuning triple-band frequency generator MMIC in 0.18μm SiGe BiCMOS technology

This paper presents a wide-tuning frequency generation scheme based on bottom-series coupled quadrature VCO (QVCO). The low band and middle band frequency signal is generated from the QVCO while the high band signal is obtained from a gilbert mixer. The tuning-range enhancement technique allows a three band frequency generation in the range from 2.4GHz to 8.4GHz without penalizing its phase noise. The VCO monolithic microwave integrated circuit (MMIC) is implemented in a 0.18 μm SiGe BiCMOS technology with 1.8 mm² area. The measured frequency range is 15.4% for the three bands centered at 2.5GHz, 5GHz, and 7.5GHz. The measured phase noise are -124.4dBc/Hz, -119.1dBc/Hz and -108.8dBc/Hz at 1 MHz offset for the low, middle, high band signals, separately. The measurement results demonstrate that proposed frequency generation technique can achieve wide tuning range capability as well as the low phase noise with very compact circuit.