Sub-1mW RF Voltage Controlled Oscillator Design Optimization for IoT

This paper presents a sub-1mW radiofrequency voltage controlled oscillator (VCO) design optimization approach. The relation between components and specifications of the LCVCO is studied, which allows to easily identify its design tradeoffs. This approach has been applied to optimize the design of two different topologies of sub-1mW LC-VCOs in 130nm CMOS process suitable for IoT applications. The first VCO is using the current-reused technique and the second one is based on CMOS cross-coupled topology operating in the sub-threshold region. Post-layout simulation results in both circuits show a total power consumption of only 136μW and 267μW with a phase noise of -114dBc/Hz @1MHz at the operation frequency of 2.4GHz.