Low phase noise pulse rotary wave voltage controlled oscillator

Abstract

This paper presents a low phase noise, wide tuning range voltage controlled oscillator. The oscillator uses a rotary wave oscillator topology, with pulse regenerative gates used as amplifiers. Pulse gates confer a paticular low-duty cycle pulse waveform whose arrival time is very weakly dependent on amplitude or pulse width. This reduces the root mean square value of Impulse Sensitivity Function, thereby reducing the phase noise. Further, the oscillator rejects common mode supply noise by double inversion of signals in every stage. Timing signals are ground referenced so the supply can be used as a control voltage. The fabricated 2.96 GHz oscillator in GFUS8RF(130nm) has phase noise of -132.2dBc/Hz @ 10MHz offset. The oscillator has a tuning range of 2.64GHz to 2.96GHz with average phase noise of -130.71dBc/Hz @ 10MHz offset.

Distributed Pulse Rotary Traveling Wave VCO: Architecture and Design

“…In this work, systematic design and architecture of a low-power, full-swing pulsed rotary wave VCO is presented. The presented design operates at about 80% higher frequency while consuming substantially less power than in [8], resulting in a ≈ 3 dB figure of merit improvement. It utilizes non-linear, full-swing, limiting amplifier stages to maintain the wave shape of a unidirectional, low-duty cycle, fast-slope traveling pulse.…”

“…These oscillators are implemented using off-chip, low-loss elements. A different implementation [8] demonstrated an on-chip transmission line pulsed wave oscillator. That design used distributed pulse regenerating amplifiers to counter comparatively high loss on-chip transmission line elements to obtain an oscillator that operates at 3.02 GHz but required 68.7 mW of power consumption.…”