A Differential Clapp-VCO in 0.13 $\mu{\rm m}$ CMOS Technology

A new differential voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO) is designed and implemented in a 0.13 mum CMOS 1P8M process. The designed circuit topology is an all nMOS LC-tank Clapp-VCO using a series-tuned resonator. At the supply voltage of 0.9 V, the output phase noise of the VCO is -110.5 dBc/Hz at 1 MHz offset frequency from the carrier frequency of 18.78 GHz, and the figure of merit is -188.67 dBc/Hz. The core power consumption is 5.4 mW. Tuning range is about 3.43 GHz, from 18.79 to 22.22 GHz, while the control voltage was tuned from 0 to 1.3 V.