A gate-modulated CMOS LC quadrature VCO

Author

Cheng, Kuang-Wei ; Allstot, David J.

Author_Institution

Univ. of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA

fYear

2009

fDate

7-9 June 2009

Firstpage

267

Lastpage

270

Abstract

A quadrature voltage-controlled oscillator (QVCO) based on the time-varying gate-modulated coupling of two LC tank VCOs is introduced. Using a standard 0.18 mum CMOS process, the new topology is compared to the conventional series QVCO in terms of start-up loop gain, quadrature phase accuracy, phase noise, tuning range, and voltage headroom characteristics. In addition to comparable phase noise performance, the gate-modulated QVCO (GM-QVCO) also exhibits superior quadrature phase accuracy, and suitability for low power supply voltage designs that use cascode current sources and active loads. It draws 2.4 mA from a 1.8 V power supply, displays a phase noise of -122 dBc/Hz @ 1 MHz offset, and has a quadrature phase error of 0.4deg.

Keywords

CMOS integrated circuits; UHF integrated circuits; UHF oscillators; integrated circuit noise; low-power electronics; network topology; phase noise; voltage-controlled oscillators; CMOS process; LC tank VCO; cascode current sources; circuit tuning; current 2.4 mA; loop gain; low power supply voltage design; phase noise; quadrature phase accuracy; quadrature voltage-controlled oscillator; size 0.18 mum; time-varying gate-modulated coupling; voltage 2.4 V; voltage headroom characteristics; CMOS process; Circuit topology; Coupling circuits; Displays; Low voltage; Phase noise; Power supplies; Signal generators; Tuning; Voltage-controlled oscillators; CMOS; I/Q signal generation; Voltage controlled oscillators;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Radio Frequency Integrated Circuits Symposium, 2009. RFIC 2009. IEEE

Conference_Location

Boston, MA

ISSN

1529-2517

Print_ISBN

978-1-4244-3377-3

Electronic_ISBN

1529-2517

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/RFIC.2009.5135537

Filename

5135537