37-mW CMOS voltage-controlled oscillators and dividers for 134-GHz phase-locked loop synthesizer

In this paper, we present 37-mW CMOS voltage-controlled oscillators (VCOs) and dividers with a large division ratio for a 134-GHz phase-locked loop (PLL) synthesizer. The dividers have two injection-locked frequency dividers (ILFDs) and a pulse-swallowing counter with a dual-modulus 11/12 prescaler. The dual-modulus 11/12 prescaler is a differential circuit, and the prototype prescaler achieved the locking range of 10 GHz-26 GHz with divide-by-11 and divide-by-12 operations at a 1-V supply voltage. The normalized energy consumption achieves 0.13 pJ (=mW/GHz). The VCO has a fundamental oscillation range of 132 GHz to 134.4 GHz and the dividers cover the entire oscillation range of the VCO. We fabricated the VCOs and dividers with a chip core area of 180 μm × 100 μm using a CMOS 65-nm process.