Low Phase Noise LC-VCO with Active Source Degeneration

Abstract

A new CMOS voltage-bias differential LC voltage-controlled oscillator (LC-VCO) with active source degeneration is proposed. The proposed degeneration technique preserves the quality factor of the LC-tank which leads to improvement in phase noise of VCO oscillators. The proposed VCO shows the high figure of merit (FOM) with large tuning range, low power, and small chip size compared to those of conventional voltage-bias differential LC-VCO. The proposed VCO implemented in 0.18-mu m CMOS shows the phase noise of -118 dBc/Hz at 1 MHz offset oscillating at 5.03 GHz, tuning range of 12%, occupies 0.15 mm(2) of chip area while dissipating 1.44 mW from 0.8 V supply.