A 21GHz 20.5%-tuning range Colpitts VCO with −119 dBc/Hz phase noise at 1MHz offset

A SiGe BiCMOS Colpitts VCO with a transformer-coupled varactor operating from 18.8 to 23.1 GHz is presented. The Colpitts topology is leveraged to trade a slight degradation in the oscillator figure-of-merit for very low phase noise. The oscillator features a state-of-the-art phase noise of −119.4 dBc/Hz at 1 MHz offset from the carrier, while drawing 17.5 mA from the 4 V supply. The oscillator FoM is −188 dBc/Hz. The VCO also shows a wide 20.5% tuning range, which results in a FoMt = −194 dBc/Hz.

[1]  J. Bock,et al.  SiGe BiCMOS and eWLB packaging technologies for automotive radar solutions , 2015, 2015 IEEE MTT-S International Conference on Microwaves for Intelligent Mobility (ICMIM).

[2]  Andrea Bevilacqua,et al.  Design of Low-Noise $K$-Band SiGe Bipolar VCOs: Theory and Implementation , 2015, IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems I: Regular Papers.

[3]  Andrea Bevilacqua,et al.  A SiGe bipolar VCO for backhaul E-band communication systems , 2012, 2012 Proceedings of the ESSCIRC (ESSCIRC).

[4]  Pietro Andreani,et al.  An Analysis of Phase Noise in Bipolar Colpitts Oscillators (With a Digression on Bipolar , 2007 .

[5]  H. Jacobsson,et al.  A 25-GHz ultra-low phase noise InGaP/GaAs HBT VCO , 2005, IEEE Microwave and Wireless Components Letters.

[6]  Gang Liu,et al.  33–43 GHz and 66–86 GHz VCO With High Output Power in an 80 GHz ${\rm f}_{\rm T}$ SiGe HBT Technology , 2010, IEEE Microwave and Wireless Components Letters.

[7]  Jongsik Kim,et al.  A 17-GHz Push–Push VCO Based on Output Extraction From a Capacitive Common Node in GaInP/GaAs HBT Technology , 2006, IEEE Transactions on Microwave Theory and Techniques.

[8]  Maged Elkashlan,et al.  Millimeter-wave communications for 5G: fundamentals: Part I [Guest Editorial] , 2014, IEEE Commun. Mag..

[9]  Andrea Bevilacqua,et al.  SiGe BiCMOS VCO with 27% tuning range for 5G communications , 2015, 2015 Asia-Pacific Microwave Conference (APMC).

[10]  G. Palmisano,et al.  A low-phase-noise voltage-controlled oscillator for 17-GHz applications , 2006, IEEE Microwave and Wireless Components Letters.

[11]  J. Laskar,et al.  A low-power ka-band Voltage-controlled oscillator implemented in 200-GHz SiGe HBT technology , 2005, IEEE Transactions on Microwave Theory and Techniques.

[12]  D. Leenaerts,et al.  A dual-band LO generation system using a 40GHz VCO with a phase noise of −106.8dBc/Hz at 1-MHz , 2013, 2013 IEEE Radio Frequency Integrated Circuits Symposium (RFIC).