Wide‐locking range ÷3 injection‐locked frequency divider using direct‐injection and switching‐injection techniques

Abstract

This research studies the RF performance of a wide locking range divided‐by‐3 injection‐locked frequency divider (ILFD) in BiCMOS process. The newly designed ILFD circuit bases on capacitive cross‐coupled oscillator with dual‐resonance RLC resonator and uses dual‐injection technique. It uses one linear mixer and one non‐linear harmonic mixer in the frequency conversion. The power consumption of the ILFD core is 5.6 mW and the locking range is from 6.8 to 11.8 GHz (53.76%) at injection power Pinj = 0 d Bm. Measured tuning range shows the dual‐band property without frequency tuning hysteresis and is from 3.73 to 2.69 GHz while varactor control voltage is tuned from 0 to 2 V.

Frequency tuning hysteresis of a dual‐resonance divide‐by‐three cross‐coupled injection‐locked frequency divider

“…A frequency tuning hysteresis loop is then measured. This has been seen in the simulated tuning range of a dual-resonance ILFD presented in [16]. A frequency hysteresis loop is also reported in complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) dual-mode voltagecontrolled-oscillator (VCO) [23] and dual-resonance oscillator [24].…”

“…The second step is to increase the self-generated second harmonic signal by an injection signal in the divide-by-3 LC ILFD [14,15]. Recently, dual-injection technique has been used in the 3:1 LC ILFD [16] for locking range enhancement.…”