A Sub-100 Fs RMSjitter 20 GHz Fractional-N Analog PLL With a BAW Resonator Based On-Chip 2.5 GHz Reference

A 20-GHz fractional-
${N}$
analog phase-locked loop (PLL) leveraging a novel high-speed charge pump (CP) and an on-chip frequency reference is demonstrated. An on-chip fully integrable 2.5-GHz frequency reference using Texas Instrument’s indigenous bulk acoustic wave (BAW) resonator is demonstrated. The low noise high-frequency reference allows for significant lowering of the division modulus leading to enhanced suppression of CP, phase-frequency detector (PFD), and loop-filter (LF) noise. A low noise class-C transformer-coupled voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO) further allows for excellent jitter performance over wide integration bandwidths (BWs) while still working with a nominally low PLL loop BW. Capability is built into the design to characterize the PLL with either BAW or external reference. The design is implemented and fabricated in the GlobalFoundries 22-nm fully depleted silicon on insulator (FD-SOI) process. The class-C VCO is measured to be centered at
$\sim $
19.7 GHz with 16% tuning range (TR) while maintaining a flat
$\vert {\rm FOM}\vert \sim $
188 dBc/Hz (10-MHz offset) over the entire TR. The PLL measures an excellent jitter and
$\vert {\rm FOM}_{j}\vert $
of 65/92 fs and
$\sim $
249/245 dB in integer/fractional modes, respectively.