A 180-GHz Super-Regenerative Oscillator with up to 58 dB Gain for Efficient Phase Recovery

This paper reports on the design of a 180-GHz super-regenerative oscillator in a 130nm SiGe BiCMOS technology. The oscillator has a tuning range of 6.5%, an output power of 0.5 dBm, and occupies an area of 0.72 mm
²
. When operated with a periodic quench signal, the circuit requires a minimum input power of -58 dBm for a phase coherent output, and can be switched at a rate up to 10 GHz. The circuit has a dc power consumption of 8.8 mW, and a maximum regenerative gain of 58 dB. QPSK and 8-PSK modulation up to 3 Gbit/s have been demonstrated at an energy efficiency of 2.9 pJ/bit. To the best knowledge of the authors, this work is the fastest reported phase-sampling super-regenerative oscillator to date.