Wideband CMOS LC VCO Design and Phase Noise Analysis

A wideband LC cross-coupled voltage controlled oscillator (VCO) is designed and realized with standard 0.18μm complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) technology. Band switching capacitors are adopted to extend the frequency tuning range, and the phase noise is optimized in the design procedure. The functional relationships between the phase noise and the transistors width-length ratios are deduced by a linear time variant (LTV) model. The theoretical optimized parameter value ranges are determined. To simplify the calculation, the working region is split into several sub-ranges according to transistor working conditions. Thus, a lot of integrations are avoided, and the phase noise function upon the design variables can be expressed as simple proportion formats. Test results show that the DC current is 8.8 mA under a voltage supply of 1.8 V; the frequency range is 1.17 to 1.90 GHz, and the phase noise reaches -83 dBc/Hz at a 10 kHz offset from the carrier. The chip size is 1.2 mm×0.9 mm.