A 100-GHz varactorless CMOS VCO using source degeneration

We present a new varactorless voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO) technique at 100GHz in 65nm CMOS technology. Using source degeneration and capacitors between the source and drain nodes of cross-coupled MOS transistors, the new technique is able to change the output frequency of a VCO in a 100GHz fundamental mode with an at least 4GHz wide tuning range. The phase noise of the VCO is −85.1dBc/Hz at 1MHz offset from the 98.6GHz carrier frequency. The power consumption is 7.4mW when the supply voltage is 1.2V and the maximum output frequency is 102.7GHz.

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