K-Band CMOS Differential and Quadrature Voltage-Controlled Oscillators for Low Phase-Noise and Low-Power Applications

In this paper, modified circuit topologies of a differential voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO) and a quadrature VCO (QVCO) in a standard bulk 90-nm CMOS process are presented for low dc power and low phase-noise applications. By utilizing current-reuse and transformer-feedback techniques, the proposed VCO and QVCO can be operated at reduced dc power consumption while maintaining extraordinary circuit performance in terms of low phase-noise and low amplitude/phase errors. The VCO circuit topology is investigated to obtain the design procedure. The VCO is further applied to the QVCO design with a bottom-series coupling technique. The coupling network between two differential VCOs and device size are properly designed based on our proposed design methodology to achieve low amplitude and phase errors. Moreover, the VCO and the QVCO are fully characterized with amplitude and phase errors via a four-port vector network analyzer. With a dc power of 3 mW, the VCO exhibits a frequency tuning range from 20.3 to 21.3 GHz, a phase noise of - 116.4 dBc/Hz at 1-MHz offset, a figure-of-merit (FOM) of - 198 dBc/Hz, a phase error of 3.8, and an amplitude error of 0.9 dB. With a dc power of 6 mW, the QVCO demonstrates a phase noise of 117.4 dBc/Hz, a FOM of - 195.6 dBc/Hz, a phase error of 4 degrees, and an amplitude error of 0.6 dB. The proposed VCO and QVCO can be compared with the previously reported state-of-the-art VCOs and QVCOs in silicon-based technologies.