A HIGH FIGURE-OF-MERIT LOW PHASE NOISE 15-GHz CMOS VCO

Abstract

A monolithic inductor-capacitor tank (LC-tank), voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO) with high figure-of-merit (FOM), low phase noise, and low power consumption is presented for Ku-Band applications. The p-type metal-oxide-semiconductor (PMOS) differential cross-coupled topology is adopted in this design to reduce the phase noise. The measured phase noise at 1 MHz offset is -116.6 dBc/Hz at the frequency of 15.57 GHz. The excellent FOM is -192.66 dBc/Hz and the power dissipation is 6 mW. The tuning range is approximately 290 MHz with control voltage of 0 to 1.8 V. The chip size is 0.51 x 0.74 mm^2. The VCO was implemented in the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) 0.18 μm complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) process.