An 11 GHz low-phase-noise voltage-controlled oscillator

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to design a low phase noise and high figure of merit, fully integrated, voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO) which was fabricated in TSMC CMOS 0.18-mu m 1P6M process. Design/methodology/approach - A differential PMOS cross-coupled architecture VCO with the capacitive feedback technology was designed to increase the linearity of frequency tuning range and decrease the phase noise. Varactor determining the performance of tuning range is also a key component in the design of VCO. The authors adopt the accumulation-mode MOS varactor. The output spectrum and the phase noise are measured by E5052A spectrum analyzer. Findings - The VCO is successfully fabricated in TSMC RF CMOS 0.18um 1P6M process. The measured tuning range is from 10.875 GHz similar to 11.1 GHz with control voltage from 0 to 1.5 V. The measured phase noise is as low as - 120.42 dBc/Hz at 1 MHz offset and the high FOM is - 189.5 dBc/Hz. The output spectrum is - 10.51dBm with center oscillator frequency of 10.942 GHz. The core circuit without buffer consumes power of 15 mW from a 1.8 V supply voltage. Originality/value - This paper shows a fully integrated CMOS LCVCO architecture using capacitive feedback technology with low phase noise and high figure of merit for OC-192 SON ET applications.