A 1mW 5GHz current reuse CMOS VCO with low phase noise and balanced differential outputs

This paper presents a low-power current reuse LC voltage controlled oscillator (VCO) with low phase noise and balanced differential outputs. A detailed analysis on different current control schemes, including various biasing techniques and the switching active core technique is conducted. A new current reuse VCO with novel current control scheme is proposed to achieve optimal phase noise and well balanced differential outputs at less power consumption. The proposed 5GHz VCO, simulated in a 0.18μm CMOS process, exhibits a phase noise of -117.7dBc/Hz at 1MHz offset while drawing only 0.88 mA current from a 1.2 V supply.