A Power Efficient 60-GHz Super-Regenerative Oscillator with 10-GHz Switching Rate in 22-nm FD-SOI CMOS

Abstract

This paper presents the design and characterization of a super-regenerative oscillator (SRO) operating at 60 GHz. The oscillator core is based on the complementary cross-coupled topology. The SRO is capable of recovering the phase of a very small input signal and regenerate it in a much greater output signal. The circuit is fabricated in a 22-nm FD-SOI CMOS technology over a total chip area of 0.49 mm2. Measurement results have shown that the minimum input power level required for a phase-coherent output is -42 dBm. The SRO delivers a maximum output power of 1.5 dBm, which corresponds to a regenerative gain of up to 43.5 dB. The oscillation frequency of the SRO ranges from 55.6 GHz to 61.5 GHz, which results in a tuning range of 10%. With a DC power consumption of only 10 mW the circuit demonstrates a power efficiency of 14.1%, which is the highest reported efficiency by a mm-wave SRO to date. The oscillator achieves a maximum switching rate of 10 GHz, which is, to the best knowledge of the authors, the highest reported to date. This makes the presented circuit suitable for highly-efficient high-data-rate communication.