A 1.9GHz Low-Phase-Noise Complementary Cross-Coupled FBAR-VCO without Additional Voltage Headroom in 0.18µm CMOS Technology

Guoqiang ZHANG; Awinash ANAND; Kousuke HIKICHI; Shuji TANAKA; Masayoshi ESASHI; Ken-ya HASHIMOTO; Shinji TANIGUCHI; Ramesh K. POKHAREL

doi:10.1587/transele.E100.C.363

Special Section on Solid-State Circuit Design — Architecture, Circuit, Device and Design Methodology

A 1.9GHz Low-Phase-Noise Complementary Cross-Coupled FBAR-VCO without Additional Voltage Headroom in 0.18µm CMOS Technology

Guoqiang ZHANG, Awinash ANAND, Kousuke HIKICHI, Shuji TANAKA, Masayoshi ESASHI, Ken-ya HASHIMOTO, Shinji TANIGUCHI, Ramesh K. POKHAREL

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Keywords: complementary cross-coupled VCO, DC latch, FBAR-VCO, parasitic oscillation, phase noise

JOURNAL RESTRICTED ACCESS

2017 Volume E100.C Issue 4 Pages 363-369

DOI https://doi.org/10.1587/transele.E100.C.363

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Abstract

A 1.9GHz film bulk acoustic resonator (FBAR)-based low-phase-noise complementary cross-coupled voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO) is presented. The FBAR-VCO is designed and fabricated in 0.18µm CMOS process. The DC latch and the low frequency instability are resolved by employing the NMOS source coupling capacitor and the DC blocked cross-coupled pairs. Since no additional voltage headroom is required, the proposed FBAR-VCO can be operated at a low power supply voltage of 1.1V with a wide voltage swing of 0.9V. An effective phase noise optimization is realized by a reasonable trade-off between the output resistance and the trans-conductance of the cross-coupled pairs. The measured performance shows the proposed FBAR-VCO achieves a phase noise of -148dBc/Hz at 1MHz offset with a figure of merit (FoM) of -211.6dB.

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