High-Performance VCO for 5-GHz WLANs in 0.35 μm CMOS Standard Technology

A completely integrated VCO for IEEE 802.11a and HiPerLAN/2 WLAN applications has been designed in a 0.35 μm CMOS standard technology. High-Q (40 at 5.2 GHz) equivalent inductors of the LC tanks have been implemented by means of a new topology of the active circuit ´boot-strapped inductor´ (BSI). The VCO consumes 9 mW and produces a local oscillation signal with the tuning range from 4.91 to 5.93 GHz. The phase noise is -129 dBc at 1 MHz of frequency offset from the central frequency (5.4 GHz), which represents the best result in literature for integrated VCOs. The VCO achieves a FOM of -189.5 dBc/Hz at 100 KHz and -194.1 dBc/Hz at 1 MHz. These results are superior to those obtained in previous works which employ active inductors, and very close to those obtained by using passive inductors realized with additional fabrication steps in more expensive technologies.