Design of a CMOS LC-VCO with low phase noise for UHF RFID reader

Abstract

In this paper, a CMOS LC-VCO with low phase noise for UHF RFID reader is proposed. A symmetrical second-harmonic resonant filtering technology is adopted to suppress the phase noise. The proposed LC-VCO is designed in Jazz 0.18 μm SiGe BiCMOS technology. The post-simulation results show that in the whole tuning range of 1.45 GHz to 2.02 GHz, the designed VCO has an excellent phase noise of lower than -130 dBc/Hz@1 MHz and a highly linear VCO gain of 65 MHz/V.