A low phase noise signal generation system for Ka-Band P2P applications based on an injection-locked frequency tripler

A signal generation system composed by a subhar-monic VCO followed by an injection-locked frequency tripler (ILFT) is designed in a 0.25 μm BiCMOS SiGe:C technology. The ILFT implements a cascoded current-biased common emitter configuration that exploits the second harmonic of the VCO to enhance the efficiency in the generation of the injecting signal responsible for the ILFT locking. At 30.8GHz, the system achieves a phase noise of −112 dBc/Hz at 1 MHz offset. The total current consumption is 38 mA for a supply voltage of 2.5 V.