Low-power transformer-based current-reuse injection-locked frequency divider

A novel low-power injection-locked frequency divider (ILFD) is proposed, in which a complementary G_m-boosted Colpitts oscillator core is employed to improve negative transconductance (G_m) and the current-reuse technique using a single transformer is applied to reduce the power consumption. The proposed ILFD exhibits a self-resonant frequency of 4.93 GHz with a maximum locking range of 870 MHz at 0 dBm of input power. The phase noises of the input and output signals are -128.54 and -134.53 dBc/Hz, respectively. The ILFD consumes 1.37 and 2.5 mW at 1.15 and 1.3 V, respectively. The chip area is 715.5 × 468 μm² in a 0.13 μm CMOS process. To the authors´ knowledge, this is the first demonstration of the current-reuse ILFD.