A 0.18-µm CMOS 3.2-10 GHz quadrature VCO for IEEE 802.15.4a UWB transceivers

A fully integrated 3.2 to 10 GHz multi-band QVCO for UWB low data rate (LDR) communication is presented in this paper. The QVCO design supports all channel frequencies of the IEEE 802.15.4a standard which consists of 8 high band channels between 6-10 GHz and 3 low band channels between 3-5 GHz. The QVCO generates 6.4-10.3 GHz covering all high band carrier frequencies while the low band carrier frequencies are generated using the divider-by-2 circuit. The start-up time of the QVCO is 100 ns which enables the turning on/off powers supply in sync with the burst transmission to reduce power consumption. At 1 Mb/s data rate, the average current consumption of the QVCO core is 3.6 - 4.9 mA from 1.8V supply.