A 13-16 GHz Low-Noise Oscillator with Enhanced Tank Energy in 22-nm FDSOI

Abstract

This paper presents a low-noise 13-16 GHz transformer-coupled voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO) in 22-nm FDSOI. The passive voltage boosting on the drain and the gate capacitors is used to enhance the tank energy, yielding lower phase noise. Contrary to the conventional transformer-coupled oscillators like the class-F, optimized for getting a high impedance at the third harmonic along with the fundamental, here the tank is optimized to enhance the limits of the achievable phase noise for a fixed maximum voltage V-max across the switched capacitor bank. The prototype shows minimum phase noise of 119.7 dBc/Hz and -142.5 dBc/Hz at 1MHz and 10MHz offset from a 13.3 GHz carrier with a 1V supply voltage. Phase noise for this single-core oscillator is competitive to the other state-of-the-art multi-core VCOs at a 10MHz carrier offset while achieving this in a smaller area of only 0.05mm(2) with reliable operation.