28 GHz balanced pHEMT VCO with low phase noise and high output power performance for 5G mm-Wave systems

Abstract

This paper presents the study and design of a balanced voltage controlled oscillator VCO for 5G wireless communication systems. This circuit is designed in monolithic microwave integrated circuit (MMIC) technology using PH15 process from UMS foundry. The VCO ensures an adequate tuning range by a single-ended pHEMT varactors configuration. The simulation results show that this circuit delivers a sinusoidal signal of output power around 9 dBm with a second harmonic rejection between 25.87 and 33.83 dB, the oscillation frequency varies between 26.46 and 28.90 GHz, the phase noise is -113.155 and -133.167 dBc/Hz respectively at 1 MHz and 10 MHz offset and the Figure of Merit is -181.06 dBc/Hz. The power consumed by the VCO is 122 mW. The oscillator layout with bias and RF output pads occupies an area of 0.515 mm2.

A 5G mm-wave compact voltage-controlled oscillator in 0.25 µm pHEMT technology

“…The architecture of the proposed VCO is based on the Colpitts structure studied in the references [16][17][18] and the structure proposed by the authors in [12] as shown in Figure 2. The active part of this oscillator consists of two transistors pHEMT 1 and pHEMT 2: each one has 4 fingers and a gate length and width of 0.25 µm and 20 µm, respectively.…”

“…The chip includes the oscillator circuit, RF access pad and three bias pads. While the chip size of the circuits presented in [8,12,15] are 3.75 mm 2 , 0.515 mm 2 and 0.5 mm 2 respectively. It is therefore a compact and reduced structure, compared to the structures published, recently, in the literature.…”

“…For most VCOs published in the literature, the oscillation frequency tuning is obtained using varactors [6][7][8][9][10]. Due to the high level of varactor Amplitude-to-Phase [11], reference [12] presents a frequency tuning technique based on varactor-mounted GaAs pHEMT transistors in order to minimize the noise conversion and to reduce the size of the final circuit and its fabrication costs, too.…”

“…In this paper, we follow the approach of [12] using the PH25 process technology from UMS foundry. The circuit studied in this paper presents good performance in terms of phase noise (PN) level, output power and DC power consumption while occupying less than half of the area occupied by the structures proposed in [12][13][14][15]. This paper is organized as follows: in section 2, we present the VCO circuit as well as its layout.…”

Estimation and Tracking for Millimeter Wave MIMO Systems Under Phase Noise Problem

“…Then, the total power consumption for the oscillator is 70 mW. In [76], the power consumption of voltage controlled oscillator is 122 mW. It is measured under phase noise at the oscillation frequency varies from 26.46 to 28.90 GHz.…”