A 10 mW 60GHz 65nm CMOS DCO with 24% tuning range and 40 kHz frequency granularity

This paper presents a wide tuning range mm-wave digitally controlled oscillator (DCO) with very fine frequency tuning granularity. Switched coupled-inductor and switched-capacitor banks provide the coarse tuning to achieve 24% tuning range from 48.1 GHz to 61.3 GHz. A fine frequency tuning resolution of 39 kHz is achieved using capacitive degeneration. The 65 nm CMOS DCO consumes 10mA from 1V supply voltage, and the DCO with output shunt-peaking buffer occupy an active area of 0.0322mm2. The measured max/average/min phase noise at 1 MHz and 10MHz offset are -88.8/-91.9/-95.1dBc/Hz and -114/-116.8/-119.5dBc/Hz respectively. The figure-of-merit varies from -186.4dB to -182.2dB which is better than figure-of-merit of recent mm-wave DCO benchmarks.