Minimum achievable phase noise of RC oscillators

To make RC oscillators suitable for RF applications, their typically poor phase-noise characteristics must be improved. We show that, for a given power consumption, this improvement is fundamentally limited by the fluctuation-dissipation theorem of thermodynamics. We also present the analytical formulation of this limit for relaxation (including ring) oscillators using a time-domain phase-noise analysis method which is introduced in this paper. Measurement shows the maximum possible improvement is generally less than 6 dB for ring oscillators, while it can be as high as 21 dB for other relaxation oscillators. The suboptimal performance of relaxation oscillators is attributed to the continuous current flow in these oscillator topologies. These results provide useful insight for feasibility studies of oscillator design.