High-Performance Harmonic-Rich Single-Core VCO With Multi-LC Tank: A Tutorial

This brief overviews the development of high-performance single-core voltage-controlled oscillators (VCOs) employing a multi-LC tank over the past two decades. From the circuit-design perspective, we study the key breakthroughs for constantly heightening the figure-of-merit and lowering the 1/f
³
phase-noise corner, according to the noise
source
and
transfer
,
narrow
and
wideband
performance optimization, as well as one- and two-dimensional (1D/2D) tuning. We also aim to present the prospects of single-core VCOs.