Design and Test Issues of a SOl CMOS Voltage Controlled Oscillators for Radiation Tolerant Frequency Synthesizers

Abstract

Design and test issues of RF voltage controlled oscillators (VCOs) for space applications are presented. The proposed approach was demonstrated during the design and testing of the differential cross-coupled inductance-capacitance (DCC-LC) VCOs implemented in 350 nm and 180 nm SOI CMOS processes. According to the radiation test results the DCC-LC VCOs are tolerant to total ionizing dose damage up to 300 krad, low-sensitive to heavy ions exposure with LET up to 80 Me V. cm2/mg and can be effectively used in frequency synthesizers for space applications.