Low Phase Noise and Low Power Consumption VCOs Using CMOS and IPD Technologies

This paper presents two voltage controlled oscillators (VCOs) operating at 5.42 and 5.76 GHz implemented in 0.18-mu m complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) technology with integrated passive device (IPD) inductors. One IPD inductor was stacked on the top of the active region of the 5.76-GHz VCO chip, whereas the other IPD inductor was placed on the top of the 5.42-GHz VCO CMOS chip but far from the its active region. The high-quality IPD inductors reduce the phase noise of the VCOs. The measurements of the two VCOs indicate the same phase noise of -120 dBc/Hz at 1 MHz offset frequency. These results demonstrate a 6-dB improvement compared to the VCO using an on-chip inductor. This paper also presents the effect of the coupling between the IPD inductor and the active region of the chip on the phase noise performance.