A 2GHz, 17% tuning range quadrature CMOS VCO with high figure-of-merit and 0.6 ° phase error

This paper presents a quadrature VCO implemented in a standard 0.35µm CMOS process. The VCO draws 16mA from a 1.3V power supply, can be tuned between 1.91 GHz and 2.27GHz, and displays a phase noise of -140dBc/Hz or less at 3MHz offset frequency from the carrier, for a minimum phase-noise figure-of-merit of 184 dB. The maximum departure from quadrature between the VCO phases is 0.6°.