A 350 mV, 5 GHz class-D enhanced swing quadrature VCO in 65 nm CMOS with 198.3 dBc/Hz FoM

摘要

A new enhanced swing class-D quadrature VCO which operates from a supply voltage as low as 350 mV is presented. The prototype 5 GHz VCO was fabricated in a 65 nm RF CMOS process. The measured phase noise performance is −137.1 dBc/Hz at 3 MHz offset with a power dissipation of 2.1 mW from a 0.35 V supply. The resulting figure-of-merit (FoM) is 198.3 dBc/Hz. Compared to prior CMOS LC VCO designs, the proposed enhanced swing quadrature VCO achieves the best FoM to date at the lowest supply voltage.