2.4-GHz 10-Mb/s BFSK Embedded Transmitter With a Stacked-LC DCO for Wireless Testing Systems

A 2.4-GHz industrial scientific and medical band binary frequency-shift-keying transmitter embedded in the Hypothesis, Odyssey, and Yield (HOY) wireless test system is presented and implemented, based on a 0.18-μm CMOS process. With the digitally controlled oscillator (DCO) using a stacked-LC tank, this transmitter occupies an area of only 0.1 mm
²
and has a measured phase noise of -111.8 dBc/Hz at a 500-kHz offset. The effects of stacking a spiral inductor over the other circuits are considered and examined using two DCO test chips. Both the antenna and the power amplifier are eliminated as a result of the short distance of transmission. By adopting an open-loop modulation architecture, a data rate of 10 Mb/s can be achieved. For a supply voltage of 1.5 V, the power consumption is only 9.2 mW and the emission output power measured at a distance of 1 cm is greater than -60 dBm.