Suppression of flicker noise upconversion in a 65nm CMOS VCO in the 3.0-to-3.6GHz band

This work proposes a method to suppress upconversion of flicker noise of switching FETs in LC VCOs over a wide tuning range, without compromising startup and 1/f noise and with no trimming. A demonstrator fabricated in 65 nm CMOS draws 0.6 mA from a 1.2 V supply and exhibits phase noise below -44 dBc/Hz at 1 kHz and -114 dBc/Hz at 1 MHz over the 3.0-to-3.6 GHz tuning range.