Low-Power 14GHz LC-VCO in 180nm CMOS Technology

A voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO) with A Ku-band LC-tank design based on a simple structure is proposed to achieve low power consumption, wide tuning range (TR), and a minimum number of components manufactured with TSMC’s 180 nm CMOS manufacturing process. The power consumption of this core is 3.75 mW when the voltage supply is 0.9 V. The are of the whole chip with on-wafer probing pads is only 0.46 × 0.63 mm2. The proposed VCO achieves 16.23 % TR from 13.36 to 15.72 GHz, and the highst output power is 11.31 dBm. The phase noise is measured as 100.3 and −124 dBc/Hz at an offset frequency of 1 and 10 MHz from a carrier of 13.4 GHz. The proposed Ku-Band VCO exhibited a figure of merit (FoM) value of 177.1 dBc/Hz.