A Low Phase Noise VCO Based on Substrate-Integrated Suspended Line Technology

This letter presents a low phase noise voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO) based on substrate-integrated suspended line (SISL) technology. With the proposed SISL technology, high-Q resonators and inductors can be realized to improve the phase noise performance. In addition, a transformed radial stub resonator is adopted to stabilize frequency and to make the circuit compact at the same time. The designed VCO achieved a phase noise of −132 dBc/Hz at 1-MHz offset from a 4.16-GHz carrier with an output power around 4.6 dBm. And the VCO size is only <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$28.94 \times 20.75$ </tex-math></inline-formula> mm<sup>2</sup>. Compared to other board level VCOs, this design has low phase noise, low power consumption, and compact size with the features of self-package simultaneously.

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