A Low-Power Injection-Locked Frequency Tripler in 90 nm CMOS Technology

This letter designs a low power CMOS LC-tank injection locked frequency tripler (ILFT) fabricated in 90 nm CMOS process. The differential-input and differential-output ILFT circuit is composed of a first-harmonic injection-locked oscillator (ILO) and a pMOSFET mixer-type frequency tripler to supply an injection current to the ILO. At the supply voltage of 0.4 V, the free-running oscillation frequency of the ILO is from 12.39 GHz to 12.86 GHz. The dc power consumption is 0.312 mW. At the incident power of 0 dBm, the input locking range is from the incident frequency 3.5 GHz to 5.2 GHz to provide an output signal source from the frequency 10.5 GHz to 15.6 GHz.