Complementary current reuse quadrature voltage‐controlled oscillators

Abstract

This study describes the design and operation principle of quadrature voltage-controlled oscillator (QVCO) with complementary current-reuse (CR) voltage-controlled oscillators (VCOs). One CR complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) VCO consists of a pair of p-type metal-oxide semiconductor field-effect transistors (pMOSFETs) and n-type metal-oxide semiconductor field-effect transistors (nMOSFETs), and an inductor. The other CR VCO consists of a pair of pMOSFET and heterojunction bipolar transistors (HBTs), and one inductor. The two CR VCOs are used to construct differential VCOs, which are subsequently used to build QVCOs coupled via coupling networks. The Bipolar-CMOS (BiCMOS) VCO and QVCO have been implemented with the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, Limited (TSMC) 0.18 μm SiGe BiCMOS technology. The CMOS QVCOs have been implemented with the TSMC 0.18 μm CMOS process. The quadrature phase generation and oscillation frequency equations are derived based on the block diagram of QVCO circuit.