A Wide Tuning Range low Kvco Ka-Band BiCMOS LC-VCO Using Varactor Bank

A wide tuning rang, low K
VCO
LC voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO) is presented in this work. A pair of HBT is used to form a cross-coupled pair, working in the Class-C mode. In order to achieve low phase noise and wide tuning range at the same time, a 3-bits varactor bank and a varactor array are used to reduce the Kvco and make the tuning range as wide as possible. The proposed VCO is fabricated in 0.13 µm SiGe BiCMOS process with core area of 0.48×0.33 mm
²
. The tuning range of the VCO is measured from 28.5 ~ 35 GHz (20.5%), and the phase noise at 1 MHz offset is better than −95 dBc/Hz. The peak output power is 6.2 dBm with the DC supply voltage of 1.8 V and current of 12.2mA.