Performance review of integrated CMOS VCO circuits for wireless communications

This paper reviews monolithically integrated CMOS voltage controlled oscillators (VCO) for wireless communications. The key challenges in VCO development include: design of a high Q tank on a substrate tailored for CMOS, multiband operation using a single VCO, enhanced manufacturability using digital frequency tuning, and optimization of the overall VCO topology for low power operation. Recent developments in each of these areas are examined and a comparison of various VCO topologies versus figure of merit (FOM) is presented.