Design and analysis of a millimeter‐wave injection locked frequency divider with transconductance boosting technique

Abstract

This paper presents a degenerated injector (mixer) with transconductance boosted by biasing the mixer transistor in the knee region of its I-V curve, without increasing the transistor size and its parasitics. This mixer can enhance the locking range of millimeter-wave injection-locked frequency dividers. To compensate the degradation of mixer transconductance (conversion-gain) due to the degeneration effect, a neutralization technique is employed. Analyses are given for locking-range and induced phase-noise of the proposed divider for arbitrary injection strength. It is shown that the locking-range, as a function of injection strength, is improved by increasing the fundamental component of transconductance. Using 180-nm CMOS technology, a 1.78-mW divider-bytwo is designed with free-running frequency of 27.92 GHz, locking-range of 51 to 59.6 GHz, and figure-of-merit of 4.83 (GHz/mW). EM simulation results of the proposed and conventional structure are compared, which illustrates 56% improvement in locking-range.

A 21.6–30.3 GHz injection‐locked frequency tripler with Darlington injection for 5G communication systems

“…Make the equivalent transconductance of the injection device boosted. This is a feasible method because the g m -boost technology has been widely studied, [16][17][18] which can provide larger equivalent transconductance without additional power consumption.…”

“…Although the third harmonic current will be increased, the fundamental current will increase even more, which seriously affects the fundamental rejection performance of the ILFT. Make the equivalent transconductance of the injection device boosted. This is a feasible method because the g m ‐boost technology has been widely studied, 16–18 which can provide larger equivalent transconductance without additional power consumption.…”

A frequency divider using interacting self‐sustained pulses in a tunnel‐diode‐oscillator lattice

“…The VCO and subsequent prescaler, enclosed by dashed lines in Figure 1, are required to operate at the highest possible speed. Injection-locked frequency dividers [16][17][18] have been attracted attention for use in ultrafast electronics. We think it meaningful to study RTD oscillator lattices for such ultrafast prescalers.…”