Low-Phase Noise Hartley Differential CMOS Voltage Controlled Oscillator

This letter presents a novel Hartley low phase noise differential CMOS voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO). The low noise CMOS VCO has been implemented with the TSMC 0.18-mum 1P6M CMOS technology and adopts full PMOS to achieve a better phase noise performance. The VCO operates from 4.02 to 4.5GHz with 11.3% tuning range. The measured phase noise at 1-MHz offset is about -119dBc/Hz at 4.02GHz and 122dBc/Hz at 4.5GHz. The power consumption of the VCO core is 6.75mW