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Design of low power low phase noise negative resistance Ku‐band VCO using planar resonator pair
Author(s) -
Patel Sanket S.,
Gupta Sanjeev,
Ghodgaonkar Deepak
Publication year - 2015
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.29232
Subject(s) - voltage controlled oscillator , phase noise , resonator , dbc , materials science , optoelectronics , electrical engineering , figure of merit , ku band , negative resistance , transistor , microwave , voltage , engineering , telecommunications
New negative resistance voltage‐controlled oscillator (VCO) at Ku‐band is designed. The proposed topology uses packaged NPN Silicon Germanium RF transistor and two parallel resonator structures connected to the device emitters. Novel active open ended planar structure is proposed as a resonator for the VCO. Resonator is analyzed in terms of required reflection coefficient and input impedance. Resonator's quality factor varies in between 159 and 235 as a function of tuning voltage. VCO microwave IC is fabricated on TMM10i soft substrate with 17.5μm Cr‐Cu‐Au metallization process. VCO can be tuned for 180MHz by varying resonators’ varactors from 0 to 22 V. Measured output power remains in between 4.2 and 8.06 dBm for the entire tuning range. Measured phase noise is −145 dBc/Hz at 1 MHz offset with 8 V tuning voltage. Normalized phase noise figure of merit for the VCO is −214.4 dBc/Hz. The circuit has low power consumption of 25.5 mW and high DC to RF conversion efficiency (ηDC‐RF). © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 57:1938–1941, 2015