A broadband low phase noise CMOS voltage controlled oscillator for Ku band

A broadband low phase noise (PN) CMOS voltage controlled oscillator (VCO) for Ku Band was presented in this paper. 5-bit switches consisting of 1-bit varactor switch and 4-bit switch cap arrays were adopted so as to obtain a wider tune range (TR) from 11.6GHz to 14.83GHz continuously, and the measured KVCO was less than 400MHz/V. The measured PN was −110.69dBc/Hz@1MHz and the differential output power was 0.96dBm at the highest frequency of 14.83GHz. The measured current dissipation of core circuit was 10.48mA, and total current consumption including buffer was 19.8mA from a 1.2V supply. The VCO was fabricated in TSMC 0.13um 1P8M CMOS process. The die area of layout was 351um×707um.