Using Inversion-mode MOS Varactors and 3-port Inductor in 0.18-µm CMOS Voltage Controlled Oscillator

This paper presents a RF voltage controlled oscillator (VCO) using inversion-mode MOS varactors and 3-port inductors to achieve low power consumption, low phase noise, broad tuning range and minimized chip size. The proposed circuit architecture using body-biased technique operates from 4.3 to 5 GHz with 20.8% tuning range. The measured phase noise is less than -125.34 dBc at a displacement frequency of 1 MHz. The power consumption of this VCO is 25 mW when biased at 1.8 V. This VCO was implemented in standard TSMC 0.18-μm 1P6M process. The chip size is 0.476 mm
²
including the pads, which is only 63% comparing with an identical VCO using TSMC inductor model.