25.3 GHz, 4.1 mW VCO with 34.8% tuning range using a switched substrate-shield inductor

Author

Agarwal, Pawan ; Pande, Partha Pratim ; Deukhyoun Heo

Author_Institution

Dept. of EECS, Washington State Univ., Pullman, WA, USA

fYear

2015

fDate

17-22 May 2015

Firstpage

1

Lastpage

4

Abstract

A wide tuning range CMOS VCO based on a switched substrate-shield inductor is presented. The proposed VCO uses a high quality factor, switchable inductor with smaller parasitics for frequency tuning range extension. Inductance is switched by controlling the eddy currents in a modified, floating substrate-shield. Using the proposed design, a 29 % inductance switching is achieved while maintaining a high quality factor of > 15.5. The prototype VCO shows an excellent frequency tuning range of 34.8 % and a phase noise of -120.1 dBc/Hz at 10 MHz offset for 25.3 GHz carrier frequency. This VCO has a FOM_T of 192.1±2.5 dBc/Hz across the tuning range with only 4.1 mW power consumption.

Keywords

CMOS integrated circuits; Q-factor; eddy currents; field effect MMIC; inductors; low-power electronics; microwave oscillators; phase noise; voltage-controlled oscillators; CMOS VCO; eddy current control; floating substrate-shield; frequency 25.3 GHz; frequency tuning range extension; inductance switching; phase noise; power 4.1 mW; quality factor; switched substrate-shield inductor; wide tuning range; CMOS integrated circuits; Clocks; Inductance; Inductors; Strips; Substrates; Switches; Inductor Switching; Quality factor; VCO; Wide tuning range; low power consumption;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Microwave Symposium (IMS), 2015 IEEE MTT-S International

Conference_Location

Phoenix, AZ

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/MWSYM.2015.7166890

Filename

7166890