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Youming ZHANG Kaiye BAO Xusheng TANG Fengyi HUANG Nan JIANG
This paper describes a broadband low phase noise VCO implemented in 0.13 µm CMOS process. A 1-bit switched varactor and a 4-bit capacitor array are adopted in cooperation with the automatic frequency calibration (AFC) circuit to lower the VCO tuning gain (KVCO), with a measured AFC time of 6 µs. Several noise reduction techniques are exploited to minimize the phase noise of the VCO. Measurement results show the VCO generates a high frequency range from 11.37 GHz to 14.8 GHz with a KVCO of less than 270 MHz/V. The prototype exhibits a phase noise of -114.6 dBc/Hz @ 1 MHz at 14.67 GHz carrier frequency and draws 10.5 mA current from a 1.2 V supply. The achieved figure-of-merits (FoM=-186.9dBc/Hz, FoMT=-195.3dBc/Hz) favorably compares with the state-of-the-art.