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A 4.6‐mW 45‐GHz compact‐size darlington‐pair LC‐VCO IN 0.18‐μm cmos technology
Author(s) -
Chiou H.K.,
Chou and H.T.
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
microwave and optical technology letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.304
H-Index - 76
eISSN - 1098-2760
pISSN - 0895-2477
DOI - 10.1002/mop.27380
Subject(s) - voltage controlled oscillator , dbc , electrical engineering , phase noise , cmos , transistor , microwave , figure of merit , inductor , resonator , materials science , optoelectronics , power consumption , extremely high frequency , voltage , engineering , physics , power (physics) , telecommunications , quantum mechanics
Abstract This work proposes a 45‐GHz Darlington‐pair voltage‐controlled oscillator (VCO) in 0.18‐μm CMOS process. The Darlington‐pair transistors achieve a 10.3‐GHz higher unit gain cutoff frequency (f T ) and lower negative resistance than those obtained in single MOS counterpart. This feature lowers the minimum current to start oscillation and hence reduces the power consumption in millimeter‐wave frequency regime. Meanwhile, a high‐Q straight transmission line is used to replace the inductor of the VCO resonator and achieves a good phase noise of −106.3 dBc/Hz at 10 MHz offset. The achieved figure‐of‐merit is −172.7 dBc/Hz while consumes a low direct current (DC) power consumption of 4.6 mW from a 1.5 V supply. The chip size including all pads is 0.19 mm 2 . © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 55:648–652, 2013; View this article online at wileyonlinelibrary.com. DOI 10.1002/mop.27380