Designing RF Ring Oscillator Using Current-Mode Technology

In this paper, a new method of designing RF ring oscillator using current-mode technology is presented. The current-mode low frequency oscillator theory is transferred to facilitate the design of RF ring oscillator. As an example, a current-mode RF quadrature ring oscillator (RFQRO) for <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$L$ </tex-math></inline-formula>-band wireless communication applications is presented. The current-mode RFQRO consists of two first-order all-pass filters, and it provides four quadrature RF sinusoidal outputs. The proposed current-mode RFQRO is verified with GlobalFoundries’ <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$0.18~\mu \text{m}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> 1P6M CMOS RF process. The simulated and measured results demonstrate that the proposed RFQRO works at 1.03 GHz, and its frequency tuning range is from 648.9 MHz to 1.17 GHz by adjusting the bias voltage from 0.62 to 1 V. The measured phase noise of the RFQRO is −105.5 dBc/Hz at 1 MHz offset, and it consumes 2.5 mW from 1 V supply voltage.

[1]  Jie Jin,et al.  CDTA-based electronically tunable current-mode quadrature oscillator , 2014 .

[2]  Ka Nang Leung,et al.  Sub-mW $LC$ Dual-Input Injection-Locked Oscillator for Autonomous WBSNs , 2013, IEEE Transactions on Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI) Systems.

[3]  Jaehyouk Choi,et al.  A 0.56–2.92 GHz Wideband and Low Phase Noise Quadrature LO-Generator Using a Single LC-VCO for 2G–4G Multistandard Cellular Transceivers , 2016, IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits.

[4]  Seok-Kyun Han,et al.  A Low-Noise Four-Stage Voltage-Controlled Ring Oscillator in Deep-Submicrometer CMOS Technology , 2013, IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems II: Express Briefs.

[5]  Jie Jin,et al.  Single CDTA-based current-mode quadrature oscillator , 2012 .

[6]  Edgar Sánchez-Sinencio,et al.  Low Phase Noise Wide Tuning Range N-Push Cyclic-Coupled Ring Oscillators , 2012, IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits.

[7]  Hossein Miar Naimi,et al.  Analysis and Design of a Phase-Tunable Source Injection-Coupled LC Quadrature Oscillator , 2016, Circuits Syst. Signal Process..

[8]  Jaehyouk Choi,et al.  A Wideband Dual-Mode $LC$-VCO With a Switchable Gate-Biased Active Core , 2014, IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems II: Express Briefs.

[9]  Yue Ping Zhang,et al.  A Low-Noise Multi-GHz CMOS Multiloop Ring Oscillator With Coarse and Fine Frequency Tuning , 2009, IEEE Transactions on Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI) Systems.

[10]  Deog-Kyoon Jeong,et al.  A 7.6 mW, 414 fs RMS-Jitter 10 GHz Phase-Locked Loop for a 40 Gb/s Serial Link Transmitter Based on a Two-Stage Ring Oscillator in 65 nm CMOS , 2016, IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits.

[11]  Worapong Tangsrirat,et al.  Current-mode multiphase sinusoidal oscillator using CDTA-based allpass sections , 2009 .

[12]  Saksit Summart,et al.  New current-controlled current-mode sinusoidal quadrature oscillators using CDTAs , 2015 .

[13]  Xiaopeng Yu,et al.  1–2 GHz 2 mW injection-locked ring oscillator based phase shifter in 0.18 µm CMOS technology , 2016 .

[14]  Christofer Toumazou,et al.  Analogue IC design : the current-mode approach , 1993 .