A K-band CMOS Low-Phase-Noise Sub-harmonically Injection-Locked QVCO with Divider-less Frequency-tracking Loop

• Published in: 2019 IEEE MTT-S International Microwave Symposium (IMS) pp. 377 - 380
• Main Authors: Han-Sen Yang, Yi-En Shen, Ian, Hong-Yeh Chang
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Published: IEEE 01-06-2019
• Subjects: CMOS; Frequency conversion; Frequency locked loops; Frequency measurement; injection-locked; Jitter; K-band; low phase noise; microwave and millimeter-wave (MMW); Noise measurement; Phase noise; RFIC; voltage-controlled oscilla-tor (VCO); Voltage-controlled oscillators
• ISSN: 2576-7216
• DOI: 10.1109/MWSYM.2019.8700923

A K-band CMOS low-phase-noise low-jitter sub-harmonically injection-locked quadrature voltage-controlled oscillator (QVCO) with divider-less frequency-tracking loop is proposed using 90-nm CMOS in this paper. The sub-harmonically injection-locked QVCO is designed using current-reused topology with enhanced self-injection coupling to achieve low dc power. To widen the locking range for the sub-harmonically injection-locked operation, a transformer coupling is adopted in the QVCO. Furthermore, a divider-less frequency-tracking loop is employed in the sub-harmonically injection-locked QVCO to adaptively align the control voltage of the QVCO. With a sub-harmonic number of 8 and a dc power consumption of 24.4 mW, the measured locking frequency range is from 21.7 to 23.2 GHz with an output power of higher than -3 dBm. The measured minimum phase noise at 1-MHz offset and jitter integrated from 1 kHz to 40 MHz are -125.2 dBc/Hz and 32.4 fs, respectively.