A novel mmWave CMOS VCO with an AC-coupled LC tank

Author

Trivedi, Vishal P. ; To, Kun-Hin

Author_Institution

Freescale Semicond. Inc., Tempe, AZ, USA

fYear

2012

fDate

17-19 June 2012

Firstpage

515

Lastpage

518

Abstract

We propose the concept of AC-coupled LC tank for minimizing VCO pushing, as well as to enable multi-terminal tuning of the varactors, in the widely used cross-coupled CMOS VCOs. The proposed concept is demonstrated with a mmWave VCO (40GHz) in a foundry-based 65nm bulk CMOS. Measured data demonstrates >;3× lower pushing while achieving 16% wider tuning range (7.2GHz versus 6.1GHz) compared to a reference cross-coupled CMOS VCO. Phase noise and output power at 40GHz are comparable to the reference VCO. Finally, the proposed VCO can operate at ultra-low V_DD=0.5V while maintaining wide tuning range, P_out>;-10dBm, and power consumption <;10mW.

Keywords

CMOS integrated circuits; field effect MIMIC; millimetre wave oscillators; phase noise; varactors; voltage-controlled oscillators; AC-coupled LC tank; cross-coupled CMOS VCO; foundry-based bulk CMOS; frequency 40 GHz; frequency 6.1 GHz; frequency 7.2 GHz; millimetre wave CMOS VCO; multiterminal tuning; phase noise; power consumption; size 65 nm; varactors; voltage 0.5 V; CMOS integrated circuits; MOSFETs; Power demand; Resonant frequency; Tuning; Varactors; Voltage-controlled oscillators; AC-coupled; CMOS; VCO; mmWave;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Radio Frequency Integrated Circuits Symposium (RFIC), 2012 IEEE

Conference_Location

Montreal, QC

ISSN

1529-2517

Print_ISBN

978-1-4673-0413-9

Electronic_ISBN

1529-2517

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/RFIC.2012.6242335

Filename

6242335