MMIC oscillator design

This paper describes the design of a GaAs MESFET-based MMIC Voltage Controlled Oscillator (VCO). The circuit is fully monolithic, including on-chip tuning varactor, and is targeted at X-band frequencies. The small signal technique can be utilised on any modem microwave CAD package. If a harmonic balance simulator is available then the design can progress to a full nonlinear simulation to confirm oscillation frequency. This also gives additional information such as output power, harmonic content, efficiency and even phase noise.