A fully integrated 5.38-5.55 GHz low power cmos hartley voltage-controlled oscillator

Abstract

A fully integrated CMOS Hartley voltage controlled oscillator (VCO) applying in 5.6 GHz wireless receiver communication is successfully implemented by TSMC 0.18-μm CMOS process.To reduce the phase noise, the proposed VCO adopts the tapped-inductor technique, differential architecture, and symmetrical layout. No more integrated inductors are used for the buffer design to avoid magnetic coupling into the VCO core. At the supply voltage of 1.3 V, measured results achieve a tuning range of 5.38 to 5.55 GHz with a tuned voltage of 0 to 1.3 V, a phase noise of −115.4 dBc/Hz at 1 MHz frequency offset from the carrier frequency of 5.55 GHz and an output power of −6.3 dBm at 5.55 GHz. The power dissipation of the VCO is 3.77 mW and the chip area, including pads, is 0.51 (0.55 × 0.93) mm2. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 55:978–981, 2013; Microwave Opt Technol Lett 55:978–981, 2013; View this article online at wileyonlinelibrary.com. DOI 10.1002/mop.27506