Wide Tuning Range Varactorless Tunable Active Inductor-Based Voltage Controlled Oscillator for Wireless Applications

摘要

This paper presents a varactorless tunable active inductor-based voltage controlled oscillator (VCO) in 90 nm CMOS process. The proposed VCO yields a wide tuning range of 116% with an output frequency of 1.19-4.46 GHz for the tuning voltage of 0.3-1.5 V. It consumes a low de power ranging from 2.44 mW to 4.79 mW for the specified tuning range. The variation of phase noise ranges from -83.03 dBc/Hz to -78.65 dBc/Hz at 1 MHz offset with the change of tuning voltage as well as tuning frequency. The proposed varactorless VCO has a maximum Figure of Merit (FOM) of -148.85 dBc/Hz with a differential output power of 1.8 dBm at tuning voltage of 0.7 V. The elimination of varactor which abates the silicon area consumption and the minimization of the variation of performance parameters are the special outcomes of the proposed active inductor-based VCO. Comparing the performance parameters such as power consumption, FOM and tuning range, the proposed design outperforms most of the cited designs.