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Dual-Band VCO Using High Quality Factor Two Orthogonally Located Inductors in 0.18-m CMOS Technology

Research Authors
Islam Mansour, Marwa Mansour, Mohamed Aboualalaa, Ahmed Allam, Adel B Abdel-Rahman, Ramesh K Pokharel, Mohammed Abo-Zahhad
Research Member
Research Department
Research Date
Research Year
2022
Research Journal
IEEE Microwave and Wireless Components Letters
Research Publisher
IEEE
Research Vol
Volume 32, Issue 12
Research_Pages
1431-1434
Research Website
https://scholar.google.com/scholar?oi=bibs&cluster=9612999332747265106&btnI=1&hl=en
Research Abstract

This work introduces a new topology for designing low-phase noise (PN) dual-band voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO) by proposing orthogonally located inductors in 0.18-m CMOS. The inductors are implemented using five metal layers keeping the lowest layer empty to maximize the quality ( factor. The first inductor is two halves shunted octagonal loops using the top layer (M and utilized in cross-coupled VCO, while the second inductor is formed by four C-shaped shunted inductors using the lower four layers M and used in current-reuse (CR) VCO. The M inductor improves the -factor by more than 25%over one loop inductor in the frequency band of interest, while the M inductor uses four shunt layers to boost the -factor by 28% in -band compared to the single-layer inductor. The VCO oscillates from 22.36 to 23.4 GHz with PN of 112.4 dBc/Hz at 1 MHz and figure of merit (FoM) of 188.8 dBc/Hz