Design and Analysis of an On-Chip Current-Driven CMOS Parametric Frequency Divider

This paper introduces an on-chip current-driven CMOS parametric frequency divider (PFD) that provides 2:1 frequency division with an output frequency of 2.4 GHz. A custom input driver stage with a buffer enables to generate the input current of the PFD core from a digital clock signal or sinusoidal source, and a band-pass filter (BPF) stage suppresses undesirable harmonics at the output. Analyses and discussions of design considerations provide insights into the PFD’s input driving conditions, filtering characteristics of the output driver, as well as the effects of the limited quality (Q) factor of passive components and layout parasitics. A prototype chip was fabricated in standard 65-nm CMOS technology and tested. The minimum required supply voltage for the PFD driver is 1.4 V with an input frequency of 4.8 GHz, whereas the PFD has an operating frequency range from 4.5 GHz to 5.1 GHz with a supply voltage of 1.5 V. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the proposed PFD is the first on-chip implementation of a current-driven parametric frequency divider in a standard CMOS process with sub-6 GHz operation, which demonstrates the feasibility of on-chip integration into RF systems.