Fully Integrated Differential Distributed VCO in 0.35-$\mu{\hbox {m}}$ SiGe BiCMOS Technology

We present a fully integrated differential distributed voltage-controlled oscillator implemented in a 0.35-mum SiGe BiCMOS technology. The delay variation by a positive feedback tuning technique, adopted from the ring oscillators, is demonstrated as a fine-tuning alternative, which results to an approximately 420-MHz tuning range. The phase noise is -98 dBc/Hz at 1-MHz offset from the 14.25-GHz carrier. An integrated output buffer isolates the oscillator from the measurement equipment. The measured output power is -17.5 dBm and the overall power consumption of the chip is 138.1 mW employing two power supplies of 3.2 and 4.2 V, respectively