Low-Voltage Dual-Band CMOS Voltage-Controlled Oscillator for Ka-Band and V-Band Applications

Abstract

A low-voltage dual-band CMOS voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO) is fabricated in a 90-nm CMOS process. The performance of the proposed VCO is improved by winding a multifunction inductor with transformer feedback and parasitic capacitance-splitting techniques. The proposed VCO adopts a push–push node to obtain a second-harmonic signal strengthened by using the injection amplifier and the bandpass filter. The measured tuning ranges of the fundamental signal and second-harmonic signal are from 27.5 to 30.04 and 55 to 60.08 GHz, respectively. The measured phase noise of the fundamental signal of 28.26 GHz is −95.62 and −111.5 dBc/Hz at 1- and 10-MHz offsets, respectively. The measured phase noise of the second-harmonic signal of 56.52 GHz is −87.83 and −107.9 dBc/Hz at 1- and 10-MHz offsets, respectively. The core power dissipation is 7.08 mW from a 0.6-V supply. The figure-of-merits (FOMs) and FOMs with tuning range (FOM <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">T</sub> s) at 1- and 10-MHz offsets are −176.1, −172, −175, and −170.9 dBc/Hz, respectively, from the fundamental signal of 28.26 GHz. The FOMs and FOM <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">T</sub> s at 1- and 10-MHz offsets are −174.3, −174.4, −173.2, and −173.3 dBc/Hz, respectively, from the second-harmonic signal of 56.52 GHz.