An Ultra Low Phase Noise W-Band GaAs-Based PHEMT MMIC CPW VCO

Abstract

A W-band voltage control oscillator (VCO) using 0.1m AlGaAs/InGaAs/GaAs PHEMT MMIC technology with ultra low phase noise is presented. This VCO demonstrated an operation frequency centered at 97 GHz with a tuning range of 2 GHz and an output power of 1 mW. The measured single side-band phase noise is -88 dBc/Hz at 1MHz offset. To the best of our knowledge, this phase noise performance is not only the best among the previously reported results for HEMT MMIC VCO at this frequency, but also rivals those for most VCOs using HBTs.

Design of VCO for 2.4GHz Wireless Applications Using Transmission Line Resonators

“…They are particularity effective and popular in millimeter-wave frequency band and above [11]. The on-chip CPW resonator for VCO design in microwave frequency band has not been reported yet to our knowledge.…”

“…Furthermore, CPW has also been employed to design VCO at various frequency bands where CPW acts as an inductor [10] and as a resonator [11]. They are particularity effective and popular in millimeter-wave frequency band and above [11].…”

A low cost and low phase noise oscillator for E-band applications

“…however, a major drawback about the bipolar technologies is that it provides lower gain than the HEMT and the FET based technologies especially at higher frequencies. This makes it more difficult to obtain a high output power which is also important to reducing phase noise (more detail in Section 2.2.3) [20,21]. Looking again at the noise assessment from QinetiQ, although the GaAs pHEMT technology is less ideal compared to the SiGe HBT technology in terms of flicker noise but it is still much superior to the GaN HEMT technology, as such, the GaAs pHEMT technology is used in this project.…”

“…21 Frequency spectrum of the 42.5 GHz oscillator using the microstrip resonator without the presence of the Hittite buffer amplifier5.3.5 Hittite LNA Buffer Amplifier MeasurementThe measurement for the Hittite LNA (part number: HMC-ALH445) is to confirm the sparameter data of the chip with the manufacturer provided data as well as to measure the saturated power of the amplifier as it was not provided.The s-parameter data of the Hittite LNA is again measured using the PNA and the probing station (Figure 5.22). The DC voltages and currents consumption behaved normally and the s-parameter is again read off the PNA network analyzer.…”