A Very low phase-noise ku-band coupled VCO in 0.25 μm SiGe:C BiCMOS technology with low frequency pushing

This paper presents a fully integrated Ku-band coupled Voltage Controlled Oscillator (VCO) with very low phase noise performances, implemented in the QUBiC4X 0.25 μm SiGe:C BiCMOS process of NXP semiconductors. The originality of this design consists in using two coupled VCOs with a new bias circuit to improve the pushing and the phase noise. Under 5 V supply voltage and a maximum total power dissipation of 231.5 mW, the proposed VCO features a phase noise of -121.4 dBc/Hz at 1 MHz frequency offset. The VCO is tuned from 13.53 GHz to 14.79 GHz with a tuning voltage varying from 1 V to 4.5 V and occupies 0.84×1.85 mm
²
.