A Low Power V-Band CMOS Frequency Divider With Wide Locking Range and Accurate Quadrature Output Phases

A new injection-locked frequency divider (ILFD) circuit topology, by combining the strengths of LC type ILFD (LC_ILFD) and ring oscillator type ILFD (RO_ILFD), is proposed to achieve high speed, low power, wide locking range and accurate quadrature output phases. The frequency-division criterion is analyzed and agrees well with simulation results. The phase-locking mechanism is also investigated with emphasis on its resilience to device and circuit mismatches. A prototype is implemented in TSMC 90 nm CMOS to validate the effective locking range of 7.4 GHz (53.4 to 60.8 GHz) with 0 dBm input signal and 5 mW DC power dissipation. The circuit attains the highest figure-of-merit (dividing frequency/power) to date for V-band frequency dividers implemented in deep-scaled CMOS technologies.