Low phase noise VCO using novel harmonic control circuit based on composite right/left-handed transmission line

In this paper, a novel voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO) using the harmonic control circuit based on the composite right/left-handed (CRLH) transmission lines (TLs) is presented to reduce the phase noise without the reduction of the frequency tuning range and miniaturize the circuit size. The phase noise is reduced by the novel harmonic control circuit having the short impedances for the second- and third-harmonic components. The proposed harmonic control circuit is designed by using the CRLH TLs with the dual-band characteristic by the frequency offset and phase slope of the CRLH TLs. The high-Q resonator has been used to reduce the phase noise, but has the problem of the frequency tuning range reduction. However, the frequency tuning range of the proposed VCO has not been reduced because the phase noise has been reduced without the high-Q resonator. The miniaturization of the circuit size is achieved by using the CRLH TLs instead of the conventional right-handed (RH) TLs. The phase noise of VCO is -119.17 ~ -117.50 dBc/Hz at 100 kHz in the tuning range of 5.731 ~ 5.938 GHz.