International Journal of Electronics and Communication Engineering.

ISSN 0974-2166 Volume 3, Number 1 (2010), pp. 139--148

International Research Publication House
http://www.irphouse.com

Design of a 4.0-6.0 GHz Cross-coupled LC-VCO for

Wireless Applications
Namrata Prasad, R.S. Gamad* and Mudita Birthare
Department of Electronics & Instrumentation Engineering,
Shri G. S. Institute of Technology and Science, 23, Park Road, Indore, M.P., India
*Corresponding Author E-mail: rsgamad@gmail.com
E-mail : namrata.prasad7@gmail.com, getmudita@yahoo.co.in.

Abstract
An integrated 4.0-6.0 GHz multiband cross-coupled Voltage Controlled
Oscillator (VCO) design has been reported in this paper. Design has used
0.18m UMC Technology. To improve the design parameters we have used
current mirror at the top and bottom in the present work. VCO is a key
component in multi-standard wireless communication systems. In addition we
have used an LC Tank and capacitors together in design. This makes a novel
approach for wideband VCOs based on the simulation. We have calculated
Figure of Merit (FOM) with the parameters such as phase noise, power
consumption and operating frequency with the tuning range of 1.91%. Main
advantage of this design is covering three frequency ranges (4.4 to 6.0 GHz).
Finally results have been compared with the previously published work and
got improvement in the present design parameters.
Keywords: Cadence, LC-VCO, Low Phase noise, Current mirror, Figure of
Merit, Low power consumption.

Introduction
The demands for wireless communication has been increasing today at the great
extend with the requirement of low power consumption, low phase noise, tunable and
reasonable area. Due to the popularity of communication systems in the GHz range
for many applications such as mobile phones, cordless phone, wireless data networks,
two ways paging etc. This needs made the circuit designer to moves towards more
compact and cost effective solutions. In turn this demand has imposed more stringent
requirement on the phase noise of the oscillators. (VCO) for higher quality receivers
an LC tank oscillator topology is taken i.e. the nature of the resonant tank in LC

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oscillator provide the lowest phase noise for the given amount of power. The phase
noise times the power consumption products primarily depend upon the Quality factor
of LC tank. It is still a challenge to achieve good performance with low power
consumption, low phase noise. The band width, FOM and tuning range are the key
parameters in VCO design. Therefore a tradeoff has to be maintaining among this
crucial requirement. To achieve low phase noise the oscillator amplitude must be
maximized this can be done by increasing the tank inductance. Paper is organized in
five sections: importance of the wireless communication and introduction is described
in section-1.
Section-2 presents the general view about LC VCO, architecture of the proposed
design with design flow is given in section-3, simulation results and discussion are
presented in section-4. Finally, conclusion is described in section-5.

Analysis of the LC-VCO

A VCO is basically comprised of a gain element and a resonator. The resonator
determines the oscillation frequency and it is composed of energy storing inductors
and capacitors, it is often referred to as an LC tank. Figure 1 Shows a LC-tank consist
of an inductor and capacitor, building a parallel resonant tank (gtank) and an active
element (-gactive) from the VCO core to generate a negative resistance for
compensating the losses in the tank. According to [4] the losses in the tank can be
expressed as:
R
(1)
Ploss = 4 2 RC 2 F0 2V 2 peak =
V 2 peak
2 2
2
4 L F0
Where,
R is the combined losses of inductance and capacitance, F0 is the frequency of
oscillations and Vpeak is the peak amplitude across the capacitance.

Figure 1: Circuit diagram of LC Tank

LC-tank oscillator gives a good phase noise performance with low power
consumptions [5]. The phase noise performance of the LC oscillator depends upon the

Design of a 4.0-6.0 GHz Cross-coupled LC-VCO

141

Quality factor of the on chip spiral inductor. The quality factor of tank is given by:
WL
(2)
Q= 0
R
Where,
W0 is the oscillation frequency [rad/s]
L is the value of the inductance [H]
R is inductors equivalent series resistance
Q is the Quality Factor.
The resonance tank consists of a high Q inductor. Resonance frequency of the
tank is expressed as:
1
Fosc =
(3)
2 LC
Where,
L is the inductor in Henry of LC tank and C is the capacitance. Due to their
relatively good phase noise, ease of implementation, and differential operation, crosscoupled inductance capacitance (LC) oscillators plays an important role in highfrequency circuit design [4]. Figure 2 has given a proposed design VCO in blocks
form.

Figure 2: VCO design in block form

Design Architecture of Cross-Coupled VCO and it Design flow

Figure 3 presents the different design steps of VCO.

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Figure 3: Design flow for proposed design

The core component of the figure 4 consists of cross coupled PMOS and NMOS
that is (M1, M2) and (M3, M4) from VCO core to generate a negative resistance to
cancel the loss in the LC tank. The active devices provide negative resistance to
cancel out the equivalent parallel resistance from the inductor, capacitor and device
resistances in order to provide sustained un-damped oscillations. Accurate modeling
of transconductance of the active devices therefore is very important for effective
cancellation of the equivalent parallel resistance in the cross coupled VCO
architecture [6]. The design consists of PMOS (M5, M6) and NMOS (M7, M8) to
form a current mirror confurigation to provide bias current in the design. The passive
element i.e. the on-chip spiral inductor L and capacitor form a LC-Tank. The two
capacitor forms the frequency tuning network and Vcon is the controlled voltage. We
have used current mirror in the VCO design. In order to reduce the power
consumption, phase noise, tuning range because they are the key parameter for the

Design of a 4.0-6.0 GHz Cross-coupled LC-VCO

143

performance of a transreceiver system. The VCO schematic of the present design is

given in figure 4. It consists of the top and bottom current controlled architecture i.e.
current mirror which balance the impedance in both the arm of circuit and hence the
current become the exact replica of the bias current. In this design a current controlled
mechanism is used to reduce even harmonics in the drain current which has a direct
impact on the phase noise component which results reduction in phase noise it also
achieves the negative resistance from the active devices by drawing minimum amount
of current from the supply and reducing the power consumed by the circuit. Here,
novel current controlled architecture is used to shift the wave form and control shape
of the output waveform by adjusting the transistor sizes for the current mirror. Phase
noise is important in wireless communications. It can corrupt the signals in the nearby
channels.

Figure 4: Schematic view of the present VCO design

Phase noise is most important parameter in VCO design therefore phase noise
performance is optimized by using lessons formula [7].

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Namrata Prasad et al

f0
f
2 K T R K 2 vco
fK T
L ( F M ) = 1 0 lo g [1 + (
) 2 ](1 + c )
+
(4)
f m 2 Pa v
f 2m
2 fmQ

Where,
L (FM) phase noise in dBc/Hz, Fm is the frequency offset from the carrier in Hz,
f0 is central frequency in Hz, fc is flicker noise corner frequency in Hz, Q is the loaded
quality factor of the tuned circuit, F is noise factor, K is Boltzmann's constant in J/K,
T is temperature in K, Pav is average power at oscillator output, R is the equivalent
noise resistance of the varactor and Kvco is oscillator voltage gain in Hz/V.
From equation (4), Kvco dominates the phase noise performance in the modified
Lesson's formula, thus phase noise performance can be improved by reduction Kvco.
Maximum d. c. power dissipation = Vsupply x Ibias

(5)

Tuning range can be determined as follows:

Tunningrange % =

W 0 max W 0 min
x1 00
W0

(6)

Where,
W0max is the maximum frequency of operation, W0min is the minimum frequency of
operation and W0 is the frequency of operation.
The Simple (FOM) to examine various performances can be expressed as:
FOM (dBF) = 20 log (freq) - phase noise - 10 log (power)

(7)

Since, the phase noise improves in proportion to an increase in power, logarithmic

value of these quantities can be subtracted.

Figure 5: Graphical representation of VCO

Design of a 4.0-6.0 GHz Cross-coupled LC-VCO

145

Simulation results and discussion

The proposed design was simulated using UMC 0.18m technology, under the
environment of cadence software and schematic editor using specter RF simulator.
We have determined various parameters for design verifications. The simulation
results have been compared with earlier reported work as given in table 1. In this
design applied voltage is 2V and center frequency is (4.0 - 6.0 GHz). Simulation
results are obtained with this design and are like as: bandwidth is 3.89 GHz, 3.71
GHz, and 3.17 GHz. The phase noise for complementary cross-coupled VCO at
1MHz offset is -126.54 dBc/Hz, -126.7 dBc/Hz and -138.39 dBc/Hz respectively. We
have observed from table.1 if increasing the center frequency from 4.0 to 4.4 GHz,
power consumption is about 6.6 mW and 6.9mW. When we have reached at 6.0 GHz
power consumption was suddenly reduced and it was about 3.0 mW. Similarly we
have got improvements in other parameters as given in table 1, with tuning range was
1.91%, 1.95% and 1.91%. Additionally (FOM) is calculated for each frequency i.e.
340 dBF, 341 dBF, and 359 dBF. From the observation we have got better
improvements in the earlier published designed. The simulation result, AC response
and phase noise of the VCO are presented in Figure 6, 7, 8 and 9 respectively.

Table 1: Comparison of earlier results with the present results

Parameters

With tail current

Ref [1]

Operating
Voltage
Technology
(CMOS)
Operating
Frequency
(GHz)
Power
Consumption
(mW)
Tuning
Range
Phase noise
dBc/Hz

Figure of
Merit
Bandwidth
(GHz)

3V

With
current mirror
Ref [2]
2V

This design

2V

0.18m
(TSMC)
2

0.18m
(UMC)
3.3

0.18m
(UMC)
4.0

0.18m
(UMC)
4.4

0.18m
(UMC)
6.0

15

5.68

6.6

6.9

3.0

10%

1.82%

1.91%

1.95%

1.91%

-131.9 @ 1MHz
offset

-148.59

-126.54 @
1MHz
offset

-126.7 @
1MHz
offset

340dBF

341dBF

-138.39
@
1MHz
offset
359dBF

4.31

3.89

3.71

3.17

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Namrata Prasad et al

Figure 6: Simulation result of the output voltage in combined form

Figure 7: Simulation result of the output voltage in splited form

Figure 8: Simulation AC response of the output voltage

Design of a 4.0-6.0 GHz Cross-coupled LC-VCO

147

Figure 9: Results of the phase noise

Conclusion
Paper presents a novel methodology to design a LC-Tank VCO for low power, low
phase noise cross-coupled VCO using 0.18m UMC technology. This design
consume only 3.0 mW of power at 2V voltage supply and achieves the phase noise of
-138.39 dBc/Hz @ 1MHz offset with the center frequency of 6.0GHz. The result
shows that the power consumption has reduced by 2% as compared to the earlier
reported work. The reduced power consumption clearly, indicates the improvements
in the performance of the design. This design also gives better result with balancing
the impedance in the circuit. Finally we have concluded that the results have been
compared with earlier reported work and got improvement in the present results as
given in table.1. The result shows the low phase noise, low power consumption is
suitable for multi-standard wireless applications and mobile receivers where low
phase noise and low power requirement are the essential parameters.

Acknowledgment
This work has been carried out in SMDP VLSI laboratory of the Electronics and
Instrumentation Engineering department of Shri G. S. Institute of Technology and
Science, Indore, India. This SMDP VLSI project is funded by Ministry of Information
and Communication Technology, Government of India. Authors are thankful to the
Ministry for the facilities provided under this project.

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