Receiver RF front-end with 5GHz-band LC voltage-controlled oscillator and subharmonically-locked ring oscillator for 17GHz wireless applications

Abstract

A 17GHz RF receiver front-end consisting of a low-noise amplifier, dual balanced mixers, an LC voltage-controlled oscillator, and a frequency tripler implemented using a ring oscillator is presented in this paper. The measured LC-VCO phase noise is -112dBc/Hz at 1MHz offset from a 5.7GHz carrier. For a 1.3-3V range in VCO tuning voltage, the locking range of the tripler is 5.5GHz (16.1GHz-21.6GHz). The receiver front-end conversion gain is 13.2dB with a noise figure of 7.1dB (SSB 50Omega) and a 3rd-order input intercept point of -6.2dBm. The 1.84mm 2 testchip draws 36mA from a 2.2V supply