A low-phase-noise voltage-controlled oscillator for 17-GHz applications

摘要

A silicon bipolar voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO) for 17-GHz applications is presented. The VCO is composed of a core oscillating at 9GHz followed by a frequency doubler. It adopts a transformer-based topology to obtain both wide tuning range and low noise performance. The VCO exhibits a tuning range of 4.1GHz from 16.4 to 20.5GHz and a phase noise as low as -109dBc/Hz at a 1-MHz frequency offset from a carrier of 18.5GHz.