A Novel 6.72GHz Low Phase Noise Voltage-Controlled Oscillator Adopting Metal-Oxide-Metal Capacitors Using 130nm CMOS Technology

This paper presents a novel Figure of Merit (FOM), low-phase-noise, LC-tank voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO). The work presents a fully integrated 6.72GHz VCO designed and simulated using 130-nm CMOS technology. Instead of using the conventional diode-based varactor in the tank design, a high-performance metal-oxide-metal (MOM) capacitor is employed as an effective varactor. The proposed VCO-measured results demonstrate a worst case phase noise of - 124.13dBc/Hz at 1MHz frequency, offset from a 6.72GHz carrier. An optimization technique is used to design an excellent FOM, which is -193.02dBc/Hz under a power consumption of 2.3mW. The VCO shows a tuning range of approximately 14%. To the best of our knowledge, this VCO presents the highest FOM level and the lowest phase noise compared to prior state-of-the-art solutions for the same frequency range.