Design and Characterization of a V-Band Quadrature VCO Based on a Common-Collector SiGe Colpitts VCO

Design and characterization of a 60 GHz quadrature VCO on a 0.25u BiCMOS technology, featuring 180 GHz f_t HBTs, is presented. The QVCO is based on the coupling of two differential common collector Colpitts VCOs. At a DC bias voltage of 2 V and current consumption of 32 mA, each output delivers -13 ± 1.5 dBm of power. An excellent phase noise performance in the range of -101 to -96 dBc/Hz at 1 MHz offset was measured in a tuning bandwidth of 2.3 GHz, from 59.7 to 62 GHz. To the knowledge of the authors, this is the best phase noise performance reported for a silicon 60 GHz QVCO.