A 130nm CMOS tunable digital frequency divider for dual-band microwave radiometer

Abstract

An inductorless, divide-by-256 fixed-modulus digital frequency divider with programmable input sensitivity, fabricated in 130nm CMOS bulk process, is presented. Both the absence of inductors and the architecture used allow to obtain a small sized chip. The fabricated frequency divider exhibits two minima in sensitivity at 4.4GHz and 6.25GHz consuming about 5.4mW from a 1.2V voltage supply. The total active area of the frequency divider is 360×115 µm2.