A V-band push-push VCO with wide tuning range in 0.18 µm CMOS process

In this paper, a wide tuning range push-push voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO) implemented in the TSMC 0.18μm CMOS process technology for V-band applications is presented. By adopting source degeneration inductors, the characteristic of the overall LC tank is improved and a wide tuning range can be achieved with a larger size of the varactor. The output signal with frequency which is twice of that in the VCO core is extracted from the center tap of one of the parallel connected source degeneration inductors. The measured output frequency is from 59.1 GHz to 65.8 GHz which corresponds to 10.73% tuning range of the proposed VCO. The measured phase noises at 1MHz and 10MHz frequency offsets are -82dBc/Hz and -113dBc/Hz, respectively, at the 65.43 GHz output frequency. The power consumption of the core circuit is 15.3mW from a 1.8-V supply.