Phase calibration in mutual injection-pulled quadrature oscillators

Abstract

An alternative approach to analysis, design and implementation of injection-locked quadrature oscillators is proposed in this paper. A novel technique is presented which allows the effects of the mismatches due to imbalances in the I/Q paths in transceivers (TRX) to be mitigated, and hence the orthogonality of the these vectors be maintained. This technique alleviates the effects of imbalances in a transceiver between I/Q paths, which would otherwise pose many threats to the performance of the system, namely image rejection ratio (IRR) degradation, gain reduction in mixers, desensitization of the RX, and ect. As a design example, a CMOS quadrature oscillator (QOSC) at the frequency of 3.5GHz has been designed and simulated using TSMC 0.18μm technology. Monte-Carlo simulations have also been performed which indicate that the design is robust to unwanted PVT variations.