A pulse-driven LC-VCO with a figure-of-merit of −192dBc/Hz

Abstract

This paper proposes a LC-VCO with a pulse-driven cross-coupled pair. The proposed pulse driving technique has the ability to achieve class-C like current waveform while reducing the Amplitude-Modulation to Phase-Modulation (A-PM) conversion by parasitic capacitance of the active devices. A VCO is implemented using the proposed technique in a standard 0.18um CMOS technology. It oscillates at a carrier frequency of 3.6GHz with a 0.65-V supply. The measured phase noise is -124 dBc/Hz @ 1MHz-offset with a power consumption of 2.05mW. The figure-of-merit (FoM) is -192 dBc/Hz.