An Active-Inductor Based Low Power, Low Phase Noise VCO Design

A voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO) with an active inductor, focusing on low power consumption is introduced in this paper. The VCO is specifically designed using 180nm TSMC CMOS technology. Through simulations, it is demonstrated that the proposed design achieves an exceptionally high oscillation frequency of 5.2575 GHz at a supply voltage of 2.2V, while maintaining low power consumption of only 2.26mW. The obtained phase noise at a frequency offset of 1 MHz is −105.95 dBc/Hz, and the figure of merit is −155.04 dBc/Hz @5.2575GHz.