A 21.6-30.3 GHz injection-locked frequency tripler with Darlington injection for 5G communication systems

This paper proposes an injection locked frequency tripler which can cover 27 GHz frequency band of the fifth generation communication. By adopting the Darlington cell as injectors, the injection current is improved greatly and thus obtains a wide locking range. In addition, an inductive peaking technique is proposed to enhance the fundamental rejection and further improve the locking range. Implemented in 0.13 mu m Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor (CMOS) technology, the post-layout simulation in collaboration with electromagnetic simulation is used to validate the proposed injection locked frequency tripler. The Precess Voltage Temperature (PVT) and Monte Carlo analysis are also performed to check the robustness of the circuit. At 0 dBm injection power, the injection locked frequency triple displays a 33.5% locking range and larger than 27 dB fundamental rejection, while consumes 8.3 mW from 1.2 V supply voltage. The core area is 0.56 x 0.23 mm(2).