Distributed Pulse Rotary Traveling Wave VCO: Architecture and Design

This paper describes the architecture and design of pulse rotary traveling wave voltage controlled oscillators that preserve wave shape, and thus wave harmonics using non-linear amplification. These oscillators can provide multiple low dutycycle clock phases and architectural modifications can allow for the same clock phase to be present at multiple physical locations. A design fabricated in GFUS 130nm (8RF) technology operates at 5.32 GHz with a 10 MHz offset phase noise of -128.15 dBc/Hz at 45.4 mW while generating 12 driven phase outputs with 15.66 ps phase resolution and less than 500 fs cycle-to-cycle jitter. It can be coarse or fine tuned within a frequency range of 4.35 GHz to 5.4 GHz with KV CO of 1.7 GHz/V and 470 MHz/V respectively. The start-up mechanism of the oscillator minimizes transmission line reflections and allows maintenance of the traveling wave shape, yielding an average 3 dB figure of merit improvement over existing designs.