Full swing 20 GHz frequency divider with 1 V supply voltage in FD-SOI 28 nm technology

In this paper we present the design of a programmable frequency divider in 28 nm FD-SOI CMOS technology. It consists of the cascade of a divide-by-2 cell and divide-by-2/3 blocks. The final circuit is capable of dividing by even numbers between 128 and 254. The forward-body-bias property of the process and the differential-cascode voltage-switch-logic (DCVSL) family are used to achieve high operation speed. The proposed circuit achieves a maximum operating frequency of 20 GHz at 1 V supply voltage. And the area and the power consumption of the programmable divider are 1815 μm2 and 4.35 mW, respectively.