Indian Journal of Science and Technology

Abstract

Background/Objectives: It is necessary to reduce the contribution of a differential pair for a low phase noise LC-VCO because previous works are mainly focused on the LC tank and tail current source. Methods/Statistical Analysis: A new NMOS LC-VCO with an LC degenerated structure is proposed for linearizing a cross coupled differential pair. The NMOS LC-VCO with the proposed structure is designed using a 0.18 µm CMOS process and simulated by Spectre RF. Findings: The proposed structure is very useful for suppressing the flicker and thermal noise contribution of a cross coupled differential pair which forms a negative transconductance. Especially, the proposed structure overcomes the limitation the previous capacitive degeneration structure when it operates at higher oscillator frequency above 5 GHz. Application/ Improvements: Its phase noise performance is improved about 3 dB compared with that of the conventional NMOS LC-VCO structure with no degeneration consuming the same bias current of 2mA from a 1.8 V supply
Keywords: CMOS, Degeneration, LC-VCO, LC Tank, Negative Impedance Transform, Phase Noise