A mmW low power VCO with high tuning range in 28nm FDSOI CMOS technology

Abstract

A 28nm FDSOI CMOS low power VCO working at 40 GHz frequency is presented in this paper. The VCO core only consumes 6mW from a 1 V supply voltage. A wide tuning range of 18.5 % from 38.3 GHz to 46.1 GHz is reached with a tuning voltage from 0 to 1 V. A phase noise higher than -120.5 dBc/Hz at 10 MHz offset has been observed after post-layout simulations. A variable inductance approach has been chosen in order to maintain a sufficiently low phase noise despite significant constraints caused by the advanced technology nodes and the large tuning range needed. Index Terms-lowpower VCO, mmW, 40GHz, 28nm FDSOI, Wifi-WiGig convergence, wide tuning range 978-1-4799-4242-8/14/$31.00 c 2014 IEEE

Phase noise analysis in CMOS differential Armstrong oscillator topology

“…The phase noise performance of the local oscillator is one of the most critical bottlenecks in modern radio transceivers. Despite significant advances in recent years, achieving low-phase noise is still a significant challenge [1][2][3][4][5].…”