A 79.1–87.2 GHz 5.7-mW VCO With Complementary Distributed Resonant Tank in 45-nm SOI CMOS

A mm-wave voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO) implemented in 45-nm silicon-on-insulator CMOS technology for E-band applications is presented in this letter. A two-inductor complementary architecture is proposed to absorb all the parasitic and essential components into the distributed resonant tank, which is beneficial for high oscillating frequency and power efficiency by doing impedance transformation analysis. As a result, the VCO covers a frequency band from 79.1 to 87.2 GHz directly with a tuning range of 8.1-GHz frequency tuning range (FTR = 9.7%). At 41.7 GHz of the measured output frequency (f
_out
= f
_vco
/2), the phase noise is -97.2 dBc/Hz at 1-MHz offset. The VCO core and buffer consume 5.7 mW from a 1 V supply.