Tao Wen Chung

A 2.7GHz 3.9mW Mesh-BJT LC-VCO with −204dBc/Hz FOM in 65nm CMOS

Standards with narrow channel spacing have stringent requirements for in-band phase noise of oscillator, which is dominated by up-converted flicker noise. In this paper, we propose a LC-tank voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO) that utilizes novel Mesh-BJT structure to suppress in-band phase-noise while maintaining low power consumption. The proposed 2.7GHz LC-VCO consumes 3.9mW from a 1.5V supply and the figures of merit (FOM) at 10KHz and 100KHz offsets are -222dBc/Hz and -204dBc/Hz in 65nm CMOS. The Mesh-BJT is compatible with standard CMOS and no extra masks are required. To our best knowledge, this is the best FOM ever reported at low offsets (<;100KHz) for VCO in standard CMOS.