Comparative analyses of phase noise in differential oscillator topologies in 28 nm CMOS technology

This paper reports comparative analyses of phase noise in common-source cross-coupled differential pair, differential Colpitts, Hartley and Armstrong LC oscillator topologies designed in 28 nm CMOS technology for 10 GHz operations. The Impulse Sensitivity Function is used to carry out qualitative and quantitative analyses of the phase noise exhibited by each circuit component in each topology. The analyses show that the lowest phase noise is exhibited by the differential Armstrong topology. Additionally, the results show the impact of flicker noise on phase noise performances.