A 0.011-mm227.5-GHz VCO with Transformer-Coupled Bandpass Filter Achieving -191 dBc/Hz FoM in 16-nm FinFET CMOS

We present a new approach to improve the phase noise of a conventional transformer-coupled voltage-controlled oscillator (TC-VCO) for 5G mmWave application. Coupling capacitors are added to a single center-tapped transformer to introduce bandpass filtering that suppresses nonlinear conversion of sec...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Lin, Chi-Hsien, Lu, Ying-Ta, Liao, Hsien-Yuan, Chen, Sean, S. Loke, Alvin L., Yeh, Tzu-Jin
Format: Conference Proceeding
Language:English
Subjects:
Band-pass filters
Capacitors
CMOS technology
Nonlinear distortion
Phase noise
transformer
Transformers
voltage-controlled oscillator
Voltage-controlled oscillators
Online Access:Request full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:We present a new approach to improve the phase noise of a conventional transformer-coupled voltage-controlled oscillator (TC-VCO) for 5G mmWave application. Coupling capacitors are added to a single center-tapped transformer to introduce bandpass filtering that suppresses nonlinear conversion of second- and third-harmonic distortion to phase noise around the VCO fundamental. The resulting TC-VCO exhibits phase noise measured at -108.1 dBc/Hz at an offset of 1-MHz which is 4.3 dB better than a conventional TC-VCO. The proposed VCO is implemented in 16-nm finFET CMOS with a core area of only 0.011 mm 2 . It tunes over a measured frequency range of 27.2 to 27.7 GHz while consuming only 4 mW of dc power. The phase noise performance corresponds to a figure-of-merit (FoM) of -191 dBc/Hz which, to our knowledge, is the best reported FoM with the smallest core area among nanoscale CMOS VCOs operating near 27 GHz.
ISSN:2576-7216
DOI:10.1109/IMS30576.2020.9223964