A bulk-controlled ring-VCO with 1/f-noise reduction for frequency ΔΣ modulator

The paper introduces a bulk-controlled ring-VCO with a tail transistor utilizing flicker-noise (1/f-noise) reduction techniques for a frequency-based DeltaSigma modulator (FDSM). This VCO converts an analog input voltage to phase information under various bias conditions ranging from sub-threshold to saturation. By using the 1/f-noise reduction circuit which is based on the switched bias technique, the simulations indicate that less noise is transferred to the output when the 1/f-noise reduction circuit is used. The phase noise of the proposed VCO is improved by 7.6% while maintaining tuning-range and linearity compared to conventional VCO. The circuit is designed using a 90 nm CMOS process.