Hot carrier and soft breakdown effects on VCO performance

Author

Xiao, E. ; Yuan, J.S.

Author_Institution

Chip Design & Reliability Lab., Central Florida Univ., Orlando, FL, USA

Volume

1

fYear

2002

fDate

2-7 June 2002

Firstpage

569

Abstract

This paper systematically investigates the hot carrier and soft-breakdown induced performance degradation in a CMOS voltage-controlled oscillator used in phase locked loop frequency synthesizers. After deriving the closed-form equations to predict phase noise and VCO gain, we relate VCO RF performance such as phase noise, tuning range and gain of VCO subject to electrical stress. The circuit degradations predicted by analytical model equations are verified by SpectraRF simulation using parameters extracted from the experimental data of 0.16 /spl mu/m CMOS technology.

Keywords

CMOS analogue integrated circuits; circuit tuning; electric breakdown; hot carriers; integrated circuit noise; phase noise; voltage-controlled oscillators; 0.16 micron; CMOS voltage-controlled oscillator; SpectraRF simulation; analytical model; circuit degradation; electrical stress; gain; hot carriers; phase locked loop frequency synthesizer; phase noise; soft breakdown; tuning range; Analytical models; CMOS technology; Degradation; Electric breakdown; Equations; Hot carriers; Performance gain; Phase locked loops; Phase noise; Voltage-controlled oscillators;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Microwave Symposium Digest, 2002 IEEE MTT-S International

Conference_Location

Seattle, WA, USA

ISSN

0149-645X

Print_ISBN

0-7803-7239-5

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/MWSYM.2002.1011684

Filename

1011684