Wide tuning range low phase noise VCO for V‐band application

Abstract

In this study, millimetre wave (MMW) voltage controlled oscillator (VCO) is designed using 130 nm complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor single poly eight metals (1P8M) technology. Under 0.8 V supply, VCO can be tuned from 46 to 61.2 GHz, i.e. 28% frequency tuning range (FTR) is achieved. For the highest oscillation frequency, phase noise at 10 MHz offset frequency is −117.3 dBc/Hz, while the power dissipation is 9.39 mW. The FTR is improved by adopting multiband scheme using transformer tuned technique. Improvement in phase noise is done with a P‐type metal–oxide–semiconductor as a variable capacitor for fine tuning of each band. Single N‐type metal–oxide–semiconductor switch is placed on secondary side of transformer which makes the transformer tunable. Figure of merit of the proposed circuit is −183.3 dBc/Hz. Proposed VCO provides wide FTR and acceptable low phase noise for V‐band application.

An optimized DCO with modified binary-weighted DCTLs based hybrid tuning banks for an E-band DPLL

“…To minimize the frequency tuning step, the coupling coefficient of the transformer k is set to 0.21. In addition, the detrimental effects of parasitic capacitance in the tuning bank can also be reduced by using a coupled transformer with such a small k [17][18][19] . The binary-weighted array of switched capacitors connected to the transformer's secondary coil can be used to achieve smaller fine-tuning steps.…”

Performance Investigation of Different Topologies of 1-100 GHz on-chip Transformers using 130 nm SiGe BiCMOS

“…Another approach for extracting parameters of the on-chip TF is using the 3D electromagnetic simulator (Sonnet) to generate the S-parameters. In that case, the following expressions are used for calculating primary inductance ‫ܮ‬ , secondary inductance ‫ܮ‬ ௦ , Q-factor for primary ܳ , Q-factor for secondary ܳ ௦ , and coupling coefficient K [20,21] (12) Moreover, the parameters of differential configuration for the on-chip TF can be extracted using [22]:…”

“…On-chip transformer (TF) is one of the passive components for designing system-onchip (SoC) applications. On-chip TF has been commonly used as a power splitter/combiner, and inter-stage impedance matching in many components design such as power amplifiers [5][6][7], low noise amplifiers [8,9], mixers [10], and voltage controlled oscillators [11][12][13]. The TF is better to be compact, low loss, with high quality factor, easy impedance matching, and with the ability of conversion from differential to single ended for power combining as well as conversion from single ended to differential for power splitting [14].…”