A ring oscillator with very low phase noise and wide frequency range using carbon nanotube technology for PLL applications

Abstract

This paper presents a wide frequency range three-stage voltage-controlled ring oscillator in CNTFET technology. The advantages of CNTFETs are the high speed of charge carriers, high signal to noise ratio, small size and ballistic transport. Therefore in comparison with MOSFETs, they have a higher frequency, and can operate at a wide frequency range with a very low phase noise if forward bulk bias and active inductor techniques are simultaneously used in the oscillators that employ CNTFETs. In this paper, the Stanford CNTFET model is implemented in Verilog-A, and the proposed CNT ring oscillator is simulated using ADS software over the 50–500 GHz frequency range. The phase noise of the oscillator is − 136 dBc/Hz at 1 MHz offset, which is suitable for PLL applications.