ACTIVE INDUCTOR BASED LOW PHASE NOISE VOLTAGE CONTROLLED OSCILLATOR

This paper proposed a fully MOS-based voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO) with tuning range and low phase noise, replacing the most often used NMOS-based inductor-capacitor tank arranged in cross-coupled topology with a high-Q active inductor. This study mainly focuses on VCO design using a MOS-based active inductor and is implemented and verified using UMC 180nm CMOS technology. The proposed VCO is resistorless and consists of an active inductor, two MOS capacitors, and the buffer circuits. The fundamental principle of this MOS-based VCO concept is to use MOS based inductor to replace the passive inductor, which is an active inductor that gives less area and low power usage. At 1 MHz frequency offset, the phase noise achieved by this proposed configuration is -102.78dBc/Hz. In the proposed VCO architecture, the frequency tuning range is 0.5GHz to 1.7GHz. This VCO design can accomplish this acceptable tuning range by altering the regulating voltage from 0.7V to 1.8V. This suggested architecture of proposed VCO design has the power consumption of 9mW with a 1.8V supply voltage. The suggested VCO has been shown to be a good fit for low-power RF circuit applications while preserving acceptable performance metrics

Concepts and methods in optimization of integrated LC VCOs

Underlying physical mechanisms controlling the noise properties of oscillators are studied. This treatment shows the importance of inductance selection for oscillator noise optimization. A design strategy centered around an inductance selection scheme is executed using a practical graphical optimization method to optimize phase noise subject to design constraints such as power dissipation, tank amplitude, tuning range, startup condition, and diameters of spiral inductors. The optimization technique is demonstrated through a design example, leading to a 2.4-GHz fully integrated, LC voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO) implemented using 0.35-μm MOS transistors. The measured phase-noise values are -121, -117, and -115 dBc/Hz at 600-kHz offset from 1.91, 2.03, and 2.60-GHz carriers, respectively. The VCO dissipates 4 mA from a 2.5-V supply voltage. The inversion mode MOSCAP tuning is used to achieve 26% of tuning range. Two figures of merit for performance comparison of various oscillators are introduced and used to compare this work to previously reported results

A Noise-Shifting Differential Colpitts VCO

A novel noise-shifting differential Colpitts VCO is presented. It uses current switching to lower phase noise by cyclostationary noise alignment and improve the start-up condition. A design strategy is also devised to enhance the phase noise performance of quadrature coupled oscillators. Two integrated VCOs are presented as design examples

Insights into dynamic tuning of magnetic-resonant wireless power transfer receivers based on switch-mode gyrators

Magnetic-resonant wireless power transfer (WPT) has become a reliable contactless source of power for a wide range of applications. WPT spans different power levels ranging from low-power implantable devices up to high-power electric vehicles (EV) battery charging. The transmission range and efficiency of WPT have been reasonably enhanced by resonating the transmitter and receiver coils at a common frequency. Nevertheless, matching between resonance in the transmitter and receiver is quite cumbersome, particularly in single-transmitter multi-receiver systems. The resonance frequency in transmitter and receiver tank circuits has to be perfectly matched, otherwise power transfer capability is greatly degraded. This paper discusses the mistuning effect of parallel-compensated receivers, and thereof a novel dynamic frequency tuning method and related circuit topology and control is proposed and characterized in the system application. The proposed method is based on the concept of switch-mode gyrator emulating variable lossless inductors oriented to enable self-tunability in WPT receiversPeer ReviewedPostprint (published version

A Fully-Integrated Reconfigurable Dual-Band Transceiver for Short Range Wireless Communications in 180 nm CMOS

© 2015 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other users, including reprinting/ republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted components of this work in other works.A fully-integrated reconfigurable dual-band (760-960 MHz and 2.4-2.5 GHz) transceiver (TRX) for short range wireless communications is presented. The TRX consists of two individually-optimized RF front-ends for each band and one shared power-scalable analog baseband. The sub-GHz receiver has achieved the maximum 75 dBc 3rd-order harmonic rejection ratio (HRR3) by inserting a Q-enhanced notch filtering RF amplifier (RFA). In 2.4 GHz band, a single-ended-to-differential RFA with gain/phase imbalance compensation is proposed in the receiver. A ΣΔ fractional-N PLL frequency synthesizer with two switchable Class-C VCOs is employed to provide the LOs. Moreover, the integrated multi-mode PAs achieve the output P1dB (OP1dB) of 16.3 dBm and 14.1 dBm with both 25% PAE for sub-GHz and 2.4 GHz bands, respectively. A power-control loop is proposed to detect the input signal PAPR in real-time and flexibly reconfigure the PA's operation modes to enhance the back-off efficiency. With this proposed technique, the PAE of the sub-GHz PA is improved by x3.24 and x1.41 at 9 dB and 3 dB back-off powers, respectively, and the PAE of the 2.4 GHz PA is improved by x2.17 at 6 dB back-off power. The presented transceiver has achieved comparable or even better performance in terms of noise figure, HRR, OP1dB and power efficiency compared with the state-of-the-art.Peer reviewe

Wideband VCO for RF Applications

This report documents our Major Qualifying Project which involves the design of a Voltage Controlled Oscillator (VCO) for Radio Frequency (RF) applications. As the electronics industry is always seeking for accurate and cheaper frequency sources that can be integrated in the increasing demand of front-end systems, our project aims to develop a design that has wideband linear tuning while being inexpensive compared to a comparable VCO. The project consists of theoretical research, design, and analysis of an oscillator configuration that can be tuned to various center frequencies within the operating range of 1.56 to 1.96 GHz. The design approach relies on computer simulations, using Keysight’s Advanced Design System (ADS) software

Analysis and design of wideband voltage controlled oscillators using self-oscillating active inductors.

Voltage controlled oscillators (VCOs) are essential components of RF circuits used in transmitters and receivers as sources of carrier waves with variable frequencies. This, together with a rapid development of microelectronic circuits, led to an extensive research on integrated implementations of the oscillator circuits. One of the known approaches to oscillator design employs resonators with active inductors electronic circuits simulating the behavior of passive inductors using only transistors and capacitors. Such resonators occupy only a fraction of the silicon area necessary for a passive inductor, and thus allow to use chip area more eectively. The downsides of the active inductor approach include: power consumption and noise introduced by transistors. This thesis presents a new approach to active inductor oscillator design using selfoscillating active inductor circuits. The instability necessary to start oscillations is provided by the use of a passive RC network rather than a power consuming external circuit employed in the standard oscillator approach. As a result, total power consumption of the oscillator is improved. Although, some of the active inductors with RC circuits has been reported in the literature, there has been no attempt to utilise this technique in wideband voltage controlled oscillator design. For this reason, the dissertation presents a thorough investigation of self-oscillating active inductor circuits, providing a new set of design rules and related trade-os. This includes: a complete small signal model of the oscillator, sensitivity analysis, large signal behavior of the circuit and phase noise model. The presented theory is conrmed by extensive simulations of wideband CMOS VCO circuit for various temperatures and process variations. The obtained results prove that active inductor oscillator performance is obtained without the use of standard active compensation circuits. Finally, the concept of self-oscillating active inductor has been employed to simple and fast OOK (On-Off Keying) transmitter showing energy eciency comparable to the state of the art implementations reported in the literature

Design and Analysis of a Discrete, PCB-Level Low-Power, Microwave Cross-Coupled Differential LC Voltage-Controlled Oscillator

Radio Frequency (RF) and Microwave devices are typically implemented in Integrated Circuit (IC) form to minimize parasitics, increase precision and tolerances, and minimize size. Although IC fabrication for students and independent engineers is cost-prohibitive, an abundance of low-cost, easily accessible printed circuit board (PCB) and electronic component manufacturers allows affordable PCB fabrication. While nearly all microwave voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO) designs are IC-based, this study presents a discrete PCB-level cross-coupled, differential LC VCO to demonstrate this more affordable and accessible approach. This thesis presents a 65 mW, discrete component VCO PCB with industry-comparable RF performance. A phase noise of -103.7 dBc/Hz is simulated at a 100 kHz offset from a 4.05 GHz carrier. This VCO achieves a 532 MHz (13.25%) tuning bandwidth. A figure of merit, FOMP, [1] value of -177.7 dB (includes phase noise and power consumption) is calculated at 4.05 GHz. This surpasses the performance of an industry standard VCO (HMC430LPx, Analog Devices), -176.5 dB, and four other commercially available VCOs. Furthermore, this study presents novel discrete design implementations to minimize both power consumption and capacitive loading effects, while optimizing phase noise. Finally, this project serves as a reference for analyzing and implementing low-level, complex RF and Microwave circuits on a PCB accessible to all students and independent engineers

Active Inductor with Feedback Resistor Based Voltage Controlled Oscillator Design for Wireless Applications

This paper presents active inductor based VCO design for wireless applications based on analysis of active inductor models (Weng-Kuo Cascode active inductor & Liang Regular Cascode active inductor) with feedback resistor technique. Embedment of feedback resistor results in the increment of inductance as well as the quality factor whereas the values are [email protected] (Liang) and [email protected] (Weng- Kuo). The Weng-Kuo active inductor based VCO shows a tuning frequency of 1.765GHz ~2.430GHz (31.7%), while consuming a power of 2.60 mW and phase noise of -84.15 dBc/Hz@1MHz offset. On the other hand, Liang active inductor based VCO shows a frequency range of 1.897GHz ~2.522GHz (28.28%), while consuming a power of 1.40 mW and phase noise of -80.79 dBc/Hz@1MHz offset. Comparing Figure-of-Merit (FoM), power consumption, output power and stability in performance, designed active inductor based VCOs outperform with the state-of-the-art

Study on wideband voltage controlled oscillator and high efficiency power amplifier ICs for wireless communications

制度:新 ; 報告番号:甲3604号 ; 学位の種類:博士(工学) ; 授与年月日:2012/2/20 ; 早大学位記番号:新595