A Transconductance-Boosted Complementary Colpitts Voltage-Controlled Oscillator

A g(m)-boosted complementary Colpitts differential voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO) is proposed and implemented in a 0.18-mu m CMOS 1P6M process. It consists of two single-ended p-core Colpitts oscillators via g(m)-enhanced cross-coupled Colpitts transistors to obtain a differential output. At the supply voltage of 1.45 V, the output phase noise of the differential VCO is -119.2 dBc/Hz at 1 MHz offset frequency from the carrier frequency of 8.69 GHz, and the figure of merit is -190.2 dBc/Hz. Total VCO core power consumption is 5.99 mW. Tuning range is 1.01 GHz, from 8.69 to 9.7 GHz, while the control voltage was tuned from 0 to 2.0 V. (C) 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 53: 1183-1186, 2011; View this article online at wileyonlinelibrary.com. DOI 10.1002/mop.25934