A SiGe-Based D-Band Fundamental-Wave VCO with 9 dBm Output Power and -185 dBc/Hz FoMT

Abstract

The design and measurement results of a fully-differential fundamental-wave VCO based on the Colpitts topology are presented. The circuit is realized in a 0.13-µ µ µm SiGe BiCMOS technology with a maximum oscillation frequency of 300 GHz. Design measures taken to minimize phase noise and to achieve high output power without using any output buffer are discussed. Operating at a supply voltage of 3.3 V, on-wafer measurements show a tuning range of around 12 GHz from 147 to 159 GHz. The circuit achieves a maximum output power of 9 dBm (at 3.3 V) and 9.8 dBm (at 3.6 V), both with an efficiency of around 6 % and consumes a DC power of 132 mW and 164 mW, respectively. The average measured phase noise of the VCO over the entire tuning range is −92 dBc/Hz at 1 MHz offset, with a minimum phase noise of −96 dBc/Hz around 157 GHz. The VCO demonstrates state-of-the-art performance in D-Band both in terms of output power and phase noise.

Low phase‐noise high output power 176‐GHz voltage‐controlled oscillator in a 130‐nm BiCMOS technology

“…There is only one VCO with a greater FOM M at a similar frequency and in any case, the proposed design shows a FOM M quite close to it [11], even if operating at frequencies about 20 GHz higher. In addition, it is important to notice that our solution requires significantly lower power consumption, bias and tuning voltages, it has a minimum output power variation and has better efficiency.…”

“…As already mentioned, at mm-wave frequencies it is difficult to achieve adequate power levels and usually two strategies are pursued in the literature. The typical one consists of the design of a high-output power oscillator without any following amplification stage [10,11]. This choice usually allows to obtain compact dimensions, lower power consumption and noise because of the higher output power coming from the oscillator, as stated in (1), from [12] L f m =…”

“…The bias current is 16 mA when considering a supply voltage of 1.6 V. The voltage supply was kept as low as possible (1.6 V) so we used a separate VCO core and output buffer stage as opposed to the conventional stacked buffer approach. In fact, usually at these frequencies, the VCOs are conceived without output buffers or with stacked or cascoded structures [11]. While we propose a Colpitts-based VCO with a cascade buffer and this choice allows to preserve very good performance without significantly affecting the power consumption and makes it possible to use a lower bias voltage, so enhancing the integration of the MMIC at the system level.…”

Research on Silicon‐Based Terahertz Communication Integrated Circuits

“…Multiple studies have been carried out for the implementation of THz LO. There are mainly four technical methods, namely the fundamental wave oscillator scheme [ 17–20 ] , the harmonic oscillator scheme [ 21–23 ] , oscillator arrays, and the scheme of low frequency oscillator or low frequency phase locked loop plus frequency multiplier chain [ 24–27 ] . For the fundamental wave oscillator, due to the influence of the parasitic capacitance in the THz band, the output frequency tuning range of the oscillator is limited.…”