Current-Reuse Active Inductor-Based VCO for Reconfigurable RF Front-End

Abstract

This paper deals with the design of a current-reuse active inductor. Current-reuse active inductor-based voltage-controlled oscillator (CRAI-VCO) with a wide tuning range is designed based on the proposed active inductor. The tuning range of VCO is from 1.25 to 2.5 GHz giving a tuning percentage of 68% at a power consumption of 5 mW. The phase noise obtained is −100 dBc/Hz. The post-layout simulations are carried out in Cadence Virtuoso using UMC 180 nm RFCMOS technology. The circuit occupies an active area of 143 µm × 148 µm. The figure of merit of VCO considering the frequency tuning range is −177.3 dBc/Hz comparable to other state-of-the-art VCO designs.