Performance Improved Voltage Controlled Oscillator and Double Balanced Mixer Chip Design

This article presents a low-power and layout dimension efficient LC-VCO (voltage-controlled oscillators) and double balanced mixer are designed and implemented in tsmc $0.18\mu\mathrm{m}$ COMS 1P6M process for microwave communications applications. The proposed VCO circuit applies PMOS cross-coupled pairs LC circuits. From the sourcing voltage of 0.9 V, the overall VCO total power dissipation of 1.54 mW, and tuning range is 532 MHz from 9.25 to 9.78 GHz. The double balanced mixer proposed converter gain of 8 dB, noise figure of 15.6 dB, IIP3 of −4.6 dBm, input P1dB of −1 6dBm. The tuning voltage is from 0 to 0.9V, and chipset core placement with layout optimization is 0.24mm².

I. Introduction

After literatures review from previously published database, CMOS LC-VCO designs have been reported and released, commonly as cross-coupled pairs architectures. The proposed low phase noise [1], the multi-band VCO [2], [5], Colpitts VCO [3] and QVCO [4] have achieved excellence performances, consumes optimized chipset size and low power dissipation. The Fig. 1 depicts resonance and impedance matching from the parallel component in the inductor of L₁ and capacitor of C₁ with series resistor R_s. The Fig. 2 depicts the put forward negative resistor −R_p of active circuit for oscillation structure delivered resistor R_p attenuation and heating loss. The Fig. 3 depicts the recommend CMOS -tank VCO and equivalent circuit. The proposed feedback of cross-coupled pair, M₁ and M₂ produced negative resistor −R_p to cover loss of parasitic resistance. Fig. 1.

(a) -tank amplifier schematic of ideal load (b) -tank amplifier equivalent of real load (c) -tank amplifier of real load in parallel.