A low phase noise VCO in eWLB package

Abstract

A chip-package co-design for a voltage controlled oscillator (VCO) designed in a 200-GHz SiGe:C technology is presented. The VCO is frequency-adjustable using a package defined inductor. An overall bandwidth of 21% supports the frequency bands for three different radar applications with a single silicon device. The VCO is accompanied by a buffer, a down-converter mixer (D-Cm) as well as a prescaler. The VCO is assembled in an embedded wafer level ball grid array (eWLB) package with its inductor in the packages fan-in area. It obtains a center frequency as high as 18GHz and achieves phase noise (PN) values of −92 dBc/Hz at 100 kHz offset frequency and an overall bandwidth of 21.7%.