IC design of area efficient voltage controlled oscillators for UWB wireless systems in 0.18μm CMOS

This paper presents three variations of a fully integrated differential voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO) design for high data rate Ultra Wideband (UWB) communication applications. The Oscillators are implemented in 0.18μm CMOS, and achieve center frequencies of 6.05GHz, 4.24GHz, and 3.2GHz. The tuning ranges are 5.14%, 20.2% and 25.9% with core currents consumed at 3 mA, 3 mA and 4 mA respectively. The phase noise performance is -97 dBc/Hz, -93 dBc/Hz and -117 dBc/Hz respectively at 1 MHz offset. The core areas are relatively small compared to similar work at 0.117 mm², 0.157 mm² and 0.136 mm² respectively. This was achieved using an asymmetric design based on the use of only a single inductor.