A low-phase-noise millimeter wave quadrature VCO in 180nm CMOS process

This paper presents a new circuit topology for a 58-GHz low phase noise quadrature voltage control oscillator (QVCO) in a standard 180nm CMOS technology. Selecting a low phase noise Colpitts oscillator core with low power consumption and improved phase noise performance, and using self-injection coupling result in a phase noise of −106 dBc/Hz at 1MHz offset of a 58GHZ carrier. The power consumption for the entire circuit, including the buffers and main cores, is 10.6mA from a 1.8V supply. This design has the lowest phase noise and better figure-of-merits compared to previous works.