Phase noise performance comparison between LIGA-MEMS and on-chip CMOS capacitors for a VCO application

Author

Fang, Leonard ; Klymyshyn, David ; Dinh, Anh ; Haluzan, Darcy ; Achenbach, Sven

Author_Institution

TRLabs, Saskatoon, Sask.

fYear

2005

fDate

1-4 May 2005

Firstpage

425

Lastpage

428

Abstract

An integrated voltage-controlled oscillator using TSMC 0.18 mum CMOS technology is presented to demonstrate and compare the phase noise performance between the VCO using a new type of MEMS variable capacitor and that using conventional CMOS varactor, which is built on-chip together with the CMOS VCO. A representative MEMS variable capacitor, fabricated using the LIGA process, has a nominal capacitance of 1.05 pF and exhibits a Q factor of 40.9 at 2.7 GHz. The simulation results show that with this LIGA-MEMS capacitor, a 4.3 dB of phase noise improvement at 300 kHz offset from the carrier is achieved when the VCO operates at 2.7 GHz

Keywords

CMOS integrated circuits; LIGA; Q-factor; micromechanical devices; phase noise; varactors; voltage-controlled oscillators; 0.18 mum; 1.05 pF; 2.7 GHz; 300 kHz; 4.3 dB; LIGA-MEMS; TSMC; VCO application; integrated voltage-controlled oscillator; nominal capacitance; on-chip CMOS capacitors; phase noise; CMOS technology; Capacitance; Capacitors; Electrodes; Frequency; Micromechanical devices; Phase noise; Q factor; Varactors; Voltage-controlled oscillators;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Electrical and Computer Engineering, 2005. Canadian Conference on

Conference_Location

Saskatoon, Sask.

ISSN

0840-7789

Print_ISBN

0-7803-8885-2

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/CCECE.2005.1556962

Filename

1556962