A very low power 3ghz 128/129 CMOS dual-modulus prescaler

In this paper the design of a dual-modulus 128/129 prescaler in a 0.25-μm CMOS technology is presented. A very low power quadrature generator that works based on injection-locked technique is used to generate the required quadrature signals for a phase-switching prescaler. As a result, the total power consumption of the prescaler is considerably reduced. The post layout simulation results show the prescaler can operate up to maximum 3GHz input frequency, at a power supply voltage of 1.5 V, with power consumption about 1mW while the locking range of the quadrature divider is more than 1GHz at -4dBm injection input level.