Wide Tuning Range Varactorless Tunable Active Inductor-Based Voltage Controlled Oscillator for Wireless Applications
Abstract
This paper presents a varactorless tunable active inductor-based voltage controlled oscillator (VCO) in 90nm CMOS process. The proposed VCO yields a wide tuning range of 116% with an output frequency of 1.19–4.46GHz for the tuning voltage of 0.3–1.5V. It consumes a low dc power ranging from 2.44mW to 4.79mW for the specified tuning range. The variation of phase noise ranges from −83.03dBc/Hz to −78.65dBc/Hz at 1MHz offset with the change of tuning voltage as well as tuning frequency. The proposed varactorless VCO has a maximum Figure of Merit (FOM) of −148.85dBc/Hz with a differential output power of 1.8dBm at tuning voltage of 0.7V. The elimination of varactor which abates the silicon area consumption and the minimization of the variation of performance parameters are the special outcomes of the proposed active inductor-based VCO. Comparing the performance parameters such as power consumption, FOM and tuning range, the proposed design outperforms most of the cited designs.
This paper was recommended by Regional Editor Emre Salman.