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Majlesi Journal of Telecommunication Devices Vol. 1, No.

1, March 2012

Wide tuning range CMOS Colpitts VCO based on tunable


active inductor
A. Saberkari1, S. Seifollahi2
1- Microelectronics Research Lab. Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Guilan, Rasht, Iran
Email: a_saberkari@guilan.ac.ir
2- Bushehr Branch, Islamic Azad University, Bushehr, Iran
Email: ss.seifollahi@gmail.com (Corresponding author)

Received: August 1, 2011 Revised: September 4, 2011 Accepted: September 5, 2011

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.

1. INTRODUCTION less DC power. The proposed architecture is capable to


Frequency of the voltage-controlled oscillators be used as the core of the wide locking range ILFDs.
(VCOs) based on LC tank is tuned by changing the
capacitance of the tank; because in a fully integrated 2. CIRCUIT DESIGN
architecture, changing the inductance value is not
possible. Tunable capacitors are based on pn-junction 2.1. Active Inductor
varactors or accumulation-mode MOS varactors in The block diagram of the active inductor based on
which the value of capacitance is changed by tuning the the gyrator-C theorem is shown in Fig. 1(a). Two
DC bias of the varactor. However, the VCOs based on transconductors connected in back-to-back, form a
this kind of tuning system suffer from limited tuning gyrator. The transconductor in the forward path has a
range between 10%-30% [1], [2]. Using a tunable negative transconductance and the one in the feedback
active inductor instead of passive one is a suitable path has a positive transconductance. By replacing the
choice to enhance the tuning range of the VCO. common-source and common-drain architectures for
Today, tunable active inductors have attracted great the transconductors, the circuit level realization of the
attention in designing filters, phase shifters, VCOs, and active inductor can be achieved as shown in Fig. 1(b)
injection-locked frequency dividers (ILFDs) [3]-[5]. At [8]. Mn and Mp act as current sources for biasing the
low gigahertz, passive inductors occupy large chip area circuit. But, this active inductor suffers from fixed low
and increase the cost. So, using the active inductor inductance, low quality factor, and limited tuning
helps to achieve lower cost and wide tuning range chip. range. To enhance the performance of the circuit, an
Although, the active inductor-based VCO has a wide active tunable resistor ( ) can be used at the gate of
tuning range, it has higher phase noise in comparison to M2. This resistor consists of the parallel connection of
its passive inductor-based one. But, due to the fact that
a NMOS transistor MR and a passive resistor
this kind of VCO is the core of the wide locking range
which its resistance is usually large (Fig. 2(a)) [9]. The
ILFD, designing an active inductor-based VCO should
resistance of the active tunable resistor can be
be taken into consideration [6], [7].
controlled by changing the gate-source voltage of the
This paper presents the design procedure of a new
parallel transistor. The tuning capability of the active
differential Colpitts VCO based on active inductor.
Simulation results indicate that the proposed VCO has resistor versus control voltage in 0.18µm CMOS
a wide tuning range and high output power in process is shown in Fig. 2(b).
comparison to other reported designs while consumes

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Majlesi Journal of Telecommunication Devices Vol. 1, No. 1, March 2012

be seen, the active inductor of Fig. 3(a) can be modeled


as a RLC network of Fig. 3(b) and its small signal
model is shown in Fig. 3(c) where g dsp and g dsn are
output conductance of transistors Mp and Mn,
respectively, g m1 and g m2 are transconductance of the
gyrator main transistors M1 and M2, and C gs1 and C gs2
are their gate-source capacitance.
(a) The relations of equivalent RLC model are as below
[10]:
g dsp
Req  (1)
( g m1g m2  g m2 g dsp  g dsn g dsp )

C gs 2 (1  R'f g dsp )
Leq  (2)
( g m1g m2  g m2 g dsp  g dsn g dsp )

Cgs 2[ g m1  g dsp  g dsn (1  R'f g dsp )]  Cgs1g dsp


Ceq  (3)
( g m1g m2  g m2 g dsp  g dsn g dsp ) Req

According to (2), when the control voltage


is increased which is equivalent to decreasing the
tunable resistor , the equivalent inductance L eq will
(b)
be decreased. So, this issue is suitable for designing a
Fig. 1. (a) Block diagram, (b) circuit level realization new VCO with tunable active inductor.

Rf
R'f

MR

Vtune
(a)

(a) (b)

(b)

Fig. 2. (a) Active resistor structure, (b) tuning


capability of the active resistor versus control voltage

As it is obvious from Fig. 2, the resistance will be


(c)
decreased when is increased.
For deep consideration of how the active inductor Fig. 3. Tunable active inductor, (a) circuit level, (b)
works, the complete schematic of the inductor and its equivalent RLC model, (c) small signal model
equivalent circuits are shown in Fig. 3 [10]. As it can

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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

proposed VCO is provided in Table I.


Table II provides a comparison of the proposed 0
VCO and recently works [12]-[14]. As it can be seen,

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)

Fig. 8. Phase noise of the VCO at 1.1GHz for

-5

power spectrum [dBm]


-10

-20

Fig. 6. Oscillation frequency of the VCO versus -30

-40
1.10 2.10 3.10 4.10 4.62
freq [GHz]

Fig. 9. Output power spectrum of the VCO at

Table I. Brief summay of the specifications

Supply Voltage 1.8V

DC Power 11.9mW

Control Voltage 0.532-0.929 V

Freq. Tuning Range 0.55-3.8 GHz


Fig. 7. Output power of the VCO versus
Output Power +3 ~ -11 dBm

Phase Noise @ 1MHz Offset -89 dBc/Hz

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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

Parameter Unit This Work [12] [13] [14]

Technology µm-CMOS 0.18 0.18 0.18 0.18

Supply Voltage V 1.8 1.8 1.8 1.8

GHz 0.55-3.8 0.5-3 0.5-2 0.4-1.6


Tuning Range
% 149 143 120 120

Power Dissipation mW 11.9 6-28 13.8 26

Output Power dBm +3 ~ -11 -14 ~ -22 -21 ~ -29 N.A.

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

[7] S. L. Jang, C. W. Chang, Y. J. Song, C. C. Liu, and C. W.


4. CONCLUSION Hsu, “On the Injetion Methods in a Top-series-
A new wide tuning range Colpitts VCO in 0.18µm Injection-Locked Frequency Divider,” Microelectronics
Reliability (50), pp. 589-593, Feb. 2010.
CMOS process is introduced in this paper. In order to [8] A. Thanachyanont and A. Payne, “VHF CMOS
achieve a wide tuning range and small die area, in this Integrated Active Inductor,” Electron. Lett., vol. 33, pp.
structure, a tunable active inductor is used as a part of 999-1000, May 1996.
LC tank. Simulation results indicate that the proposed [9] C. C. Wei, H. C. Chiu, and W. S. Feng, “An Ultra-
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[10] S. L. Jang, J. C. Han, C. F. Lee, and J. F. Huang, “A
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