Low Voltage Low Power Quadrature LC Oscillator Based on Back-gate Superharmonic Capacitive Coupling

Abstract

This work introduces a new low voltage low power superharmonic capacitive coupling quadrature LC oscillator (QLCO) made by coupling two identical cross-connected LC oscillators without tail transistor. In each of the core oscillators, the back-gate nodes of the cross-coupled NMOS pair and PMOS pair, acting as common mode nodes, have been connected directly. Then the core oscillators are coupled together via capacitive coupling of the PMOS common mode node in one of the core oscillators to the NMOS common mode node in the other core oscillator, and vice versa. Only capacitors are used for coupling of the two core oscillators and therefore no extra noise sources are imposed on the circuit. Operation of the proposed QLCO was investigated with simulation using a commercial 0.18 µm RF CMOS technology: it shows a power dissipation of 5.2 mW from a 0.6 V supply voltage. Since the proposed core oscillator has Complementary NMOS and PMOS cross coupled pairs, and capacitive coupling method will not introduce extra phase noise, so this circuit can operate with a low phase noise as low as −126.8 dBc/Hz at 1 MHz offset from center oscillation frequency of 2.4 GHz, as confirmed with simulation.