Fully Integrated Millimeter-Wave VCO with 32% Tuning Range

In this paper, the authors present a fully integrated VCO with 32% tuning range centered at 38.9 GHz. The VCO was designed using a commercially available, inexpensive 0.8 mum Si/SiGe HBT technology with f
_T
and f
_max
of 80 and 90 GHz, respectively. It consumes 195 mW DC power and provides an output power of more than 5 dBm. A phase noise of -93 dBc/Hz at 1 MHz offset was measured for the free running VCO.