Power efficient Ka-band low phase noise VCO in 0.13 mu m CMOS

Abstract

A 27 GHz cross-coupled LC voltage controlled oscillator (VCO) using a standard 0.13 mu m CMOS technology is presented. The VCO using a high-Q LC resonator with a micro-strip inductor (mu-strip L) provides a phase noise of -113 dBc/Hz at a 1 MHz offset frequency. The figure-of-merit (FoM) is -194.6 dBc/Hz. To obtain high output power, it also uses a common source amplifier as a buffer and it shows the output power of 23.5 dBm at an oscillation frequency of 26.89 GHz. This is believed to be the lowest phase noise and FoM with the highest output power of a millimetre-wave VCO in CMOS technology.