A 1-V, 6.72-mW, 5.8-GHz CMOS Injection-Locked Quadrature Local Oscillator with Stacked Transformer Feedback VCO

Abstract

SUMMARY This paper presents a real integration of a 5.8-GHz injection-locked quadrature local oscillator that includes two LC-tuned injection-locked frequency dividers (ILFDs) and a wide-tuning stacked-transformer feedback voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO) operated in double frequency. A symmetric differential stacked-transformer with a high coupling factor and a high quality factor is used as a feedback component for the wide-tuning VCO design. The wide tuning range, which is greater than three times the desired bandwidth, is achieved by selecting a greater tuning capacitance ratio available from high-voltage N-type accumulation-mode MOS varactors and a smaller self-inductance stacked-transformer. Since the quality factors of the LC-resonator components can sustain at a high enough level, the wide-tuning VCO does not suffer from the phase noise degradation too much. In addition, the tuning range of the local oscillator is extended simultaneously by utilizing switched capacitor arrays (SCAs) in the ILFDs. The circuit is implemented by TSMC's 0.18-μm RF CMOS technology. At a 1-V power supply, the whole integrated circuit dissipates 6.72 mW (4.05 mW for the VCO and 2.67 mW for the two ILFDs). The total tuning range frequency is about 500 MHz (from 5.54 GHz to 6.04 GHz) when the tuning voltage V tune ranges from 0 V to 1.8 V. At around the output frequency of 5.77 GHz (at V tune = 0.5 V), the measured phase noise of this local oscillator is -119.4 dBc/Hz at a 1-MHz offset frequency. This work satisfies the specification requirement for IEEE 802.11a UNII-3 band application. The corresponding figure-of-merit (FOM) calculated is 186.3 dB.