A Ku-Band Voltage-Controlled Oscillator Equipped With a Compact Enhanced Linearity Tuning Converter

Abstract

This letter proposes a Ku-band LC-tank voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO) equipped with a compact enhanced linearity tuning converter, which was fabricated using the 0.18-μm CMOS process of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC). The proposed linearity tuning converter dissipated only a few 10-μA currents and compensated for the nonlinearity of the resonant tank, ensuring the linearity tuning characteristic of the VCO. A small tuning sensitivity variation of 80-280 MHz/V was attained at operating frequencies from 13.2 to 14.7 GHz. The measured phase noise was -114.9 dBc/Hz at a 1-MHz offset frequency from the carrier signal of 13.5 GHz. The chip size, including the linearity tuning converter, was 0.7×0.93 mm <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sup> . The proposed VCO with a supply voltage of 1.8 V dissipated a current of 4 mA.