Physics-Based Phase Noise Analysis of CMOS RF Oscillators

A TCAD framework that can predict the phase noise spectrum of the oscillator using the nonlinear perturbation analysis is developed. The device-circuit mixed-mode simulation technique based upon the shooting-Newton method is exploited to evaluate the periodic steady-state solution of the oscillator. The influence of noise sources inside the devices on the phase deviation is calculated in an efficient and accurate way using the perturbation projection vector. The output power spectrum can be easily obtained in this framework. As its application, the output power spectrum of a CMOS LC voltage-controlled oscillator is calculated