Phase Noise CMOS Voltage-controlled Oscillator Research Articles

Low Phase Noise CMOS VCO with Hybrid Inductor

A low phase noise CMOS voltage controlled oscillator(VCO) for multi-band/multistandard RF Transceivers is presented. For both wide tunability and low phase noise characteristics, Hybrid inductor which uses both bondwire inductor and planar spiral inductor in the same area, is proposed. This approach reduces inductance variation and presents high quality factor without custom-designed single-turn inductor occupying large area, which improves phase noise and tuning range characteristics without additional area loss. An LC VCO is designed in a 0.13um CMOS technology to demonstrate the hybrid inductor concept. The measured phase noise is -121dBc/Hz at 400KHz offset and -142dBc/Hz at 3MHz offset from a 900MHz carrier frequency after divider. The tuning range of about 28%(3.15 to 4.18GHz) is measured. The VCO consumes 7.5mA from 1.3V supply and meets the requirements for GSM/EDGE and WCDMA standard.

A 0.35-μm CMOS cross-coupled complementary Colpitts voltage controlled oscillator

This article presents a differential cross-coupled complementary Colpitts CMOS voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO).The low phase noise CMOS VCO has been implemented with the TSMC 0.35-μm 2P4M CMOS technology and adopts a pair of cross-coupled PMOS transistors to achieve faster start-up oscillation. The VCO operates from 6.16 to 6.5 GHz with 5.3% tuning range. The measured phase noise at 1 MHz offset is −121.12 dBc/Hz at 6.417 GHz. The power consumption of the VCO core is 6.16 mW. The figure of merit is −189.37 dBc/Hz. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett, 2011; View this article online at wileyonlinelibrary.com. DOI 10.1002/mop.26192