IEEE Microwave and Wireless Components Letters | 2021
A Ku-Band Voltage-Controlled Oscillator Equipped With a Compact Enhanced Linearity Tuning Converter
Abstract
This letter proposes a <italic>Ku</italic>-band <italic>LC</italic>-tank voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO) equipped with a compact enhanced linearity tuning converter, which was fabricated using the 0.18-<inline-formula> <tex-math notation= LaTeX >$\\mu \\text{m}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> CMOS process of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC). The proposed linearity tuning converter dissipated only a few 10-<inline-formula> <tex-math notation= LaTeX >$\\mu \\text{A}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> currents and compensated for the nonlinearity of the resonant tank, ensuring the linearity tuning characteristic of the VCO. A small tuning sensitivity variation of 80-280 MHz/V was attained at operating frequencies from 13.2 to 14.7 GHz. The measured phase noise was −114.9 dBc/Hz at a 1-MHz offset frequency from the carrier signal of 13.5 GHz. The chip size, including the linearity tuning converter, was <inline-formula> <tex-math notation= LaTeX >$0.7\\times0.93$ </tex-math></inline-formula> mm<sup>2</sup>. The proposed VCO with a supply voltage of 1.8 V dissipated a current of 4 mA.