17-Article Text in MSWORD Format-249-2-10-20140210 PDF
17-Article Text in MSWORD Format-249-2-10-20140210 PDF
17-Article Text in MSWORD Format-249-2-10-20140210 PDF
1, March 2012
ABSTRACT:
In this paper, a new differential Colpitts voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO) is presented. The VCO is based on the
gm-boosted structure to relax the oscillation start-up current requirement and reduce the DC power consumption in
comparison to conventional Colpitts structures. In the proposed VCO, a tunable active inductor is utilized as a part of
LC tank instead of passive inductor with constant inductance. The proposed VCO is designed and simulated in ADS in
a 0.18μm CMOS process. Simulation results indicate that the proposed VCO has a wide tuning range in comparison to
other reported designs while consumes less DC power.
KEYWORDS: CMOS, Colpitts, Tunable Active Inductor, voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO), Wide Tuning Range.
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Majlesi Journal of Telecommunication Devices Vol. 1, No. 1, March 2012
C gs 2 (1 R'f g dsp )
Leq (2)
( g m1g m2 g m2 g dsp g dsn g dsp )
Rf
R'f
MR
Vtune
(a)
(a) (b)
(b)
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Majlesi Journal of Telecommunication Devices Vol. 1, No. 1, March 2012
2.2. Voltage-controlled Oscillator biasing the gyrator main transistors, as shown in Fig.
The proposed VCO based on the tunable active 3(a). Since the start-up conditions for conventional
inductor is shown in Fig. 4. In this circuit, transistors Colpitts VCOs are more difficult than the cross-
M1-M6 in conjunction with active resistors form a coupled architectures, the proposed VCO is based on
differential tunable active inductor to realize a fully the gm-boosted structure, which is realized by cross-
differential VCO. The oscillation frequency of the coupled connections between the gate terminal of M7
VCO depends on the equivalent inductance of the (M8) to the drain terminal of M8 (M7), to relax the
active inductor, capacitors C1-C5, and parasitic oscillation start-up current requirement and reduce the
capacitance of transistors M7-M10. The frequency can DC power consumption in comparison to conventional
be tuned by changing the control voltage . When Colpitts structures [11]. The proposed VCO is designed
is increased, the inductance of the LC tank will in a self-bias mode and the transistors M9 and M10 act
be decreased and hence the oscillation frequency will as bias sources where their gate terminal is connected
be increased. to the output port to reduce the needed bias voltage.
The frequency tuning range of the VCO is as The transconductance of the designed VCO is
bellow: C2
increased by the factor of (1 ) in comparison to
f f min C1
Tuning Range max % (4)
(
f max f min
)
conventional one, therefore these capacitors should be
2 chosen carefully.
where f max and f min are maximum and minimum
oscillation frequency of the VCO. 3. SIMULATION AND DISCUSSION
The proposed Colpitts VCO is simulated in a
0.18µm CMOS process. Supply voltage of circuit is
1.8V.
The output waveforms of the VCO at
and 1.5GHz frequency is shown in
Fig. 5. Fig. 6 shows the oscillation frequency of the
VCO for different values of from 0.53V to
0.93V. As it can be seen, the output frequency of the
VCO has a range of 3250MHz which corresponds to
149% tuning range from 550MHz to 3.8GHz. The
output power of the VCO versus is shown in
Fig. 7, which is from +3dBm to -11dBm.
1.1
1.0
0.9
Vout+,Vout-(V)
0.8
0.7
0.6
0.5
0.4
0.3
70.0
70.2
70.4
70.6
70.8
71.0
71.2
71.4
71.6
71.8
72.0
Time(nsec)
Fig. 4. The proposed VCO
Fig. 5. Output waveforms of the VCO at 1.5GHz
The core of the VCO is based on a differential Fig. 8 shows the phase noise of the proposed VCO
Colpitts architecture which consists of the transistors at 1.1GHz frequency for . The
M7-M10 and capacitors C1-C5. This structure not only output power spectrum of the VCO at
generates the differential output signals and negative
is shown in Fig. 9.
resistance, but also acts as the current source Mn for
A brief summary of the specifications of the
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Majlesi Journal of Telecommunication Devices Vol. 1, No. 1, March 2012
Phase Noise(dBc/Hz)
-20
the proposed VCO has much wider tuning range of
149% and higher output power in comparison to other -40
designs while it dessipates less DC power. Also, its
phase noise is comparable with some works. -60
-80
-100
0.0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1.0
freq (MHz)
-5
-20
-40
1.10 2.10 3.10 4.10 4.62
freq [GHz]
DC Power 11.9mW
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Majlesi Journal of Telecommunication Devices Vol. 1, No. 1, March 2012
Table II. Performance comparison of the proposed VCO and recently works
Phase Noise dBc/Hz -78 ~ -89 -101 ~ -118 -78 ~ -90 -88 ~ -95
@ 1MHz Offset
Wide Tuning - Active Inductor Active Inductor Active Inductor Ring Oscillator
Range Technique
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