Demonstration of a Switched Resonator Concept in a Dual-Band

Monolithic CMOS LC-nned VCO

Seong-Mo Yim and Kenneth K. 0
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Silicon Microwave Integrated Circuits and Systems Research Group
University of Florida, 538 Engineering Building, PO Box 116130, Gainesville, FL 32611
Tel: 352-392-8382, Fax: 352-392-8381, e-mail: smyim@tec.ufl.edu

!IM7
Absfrnct - A switched resonator concept which allows better T VDD
trade-off between phase noise and power consumption is dem-
onstrated using a dual-band VCO. The dual-band VCO oper-
ates near 900 MHz and 1.8 GHz with phase noise of -125 and -
123 dBr/Hz at a 600-KHz offset and 16-mW power consump-
tion. Compared to a single band 1.8GHz VCO, the dual-band
VCO has almost the same phase noise and power consumption.

I. Introduction L5 ; ' L6

As silicon process technologies are scaled, supply volt-

age is scaled along with the technologies. One of the chal-
lenges for this is the reduced bias range for varactors, which
reduces the tuning range of circuits using the varactors. To
make this worse, there are increasing demands for circuits
which can handle multiple frequency bands. In response to
this, dual- or multi- band voltage controlled oscillators
(VCO's) have been reported with multiple VCO's[ 1],[2]. In
addition to a large area, in these circuits, additional issues
relating to the power-up and power-down transients of the
VCO's must be addressed One VCO operating at two or
more frequency bands or a VCO with a large tuning range is
desirable. To address these issues, a switched resonator con-
cept is proposed and demonstrated in a dual-band VCO.
A switched resonator is composed of two spiral induc-
tors and a switching transistor connected in parallel with one
of the inductors (dotted rectangle in Figure 1). The induc-
tance of the resonator is largely determined by the two
inductors while the capacitance is determined by the parasit-
ics capacitance of the inductors and the capacitance between
drain and ground of the switching transistors. The induc-
tance and capacitance of the resonator are switched by short-
ing out one of the inductors, and transistor capacitances and
the capacitance associated with L2 using the switching tran-
sistor. Variable inductor concepts have been previously
reported [3],[4], and utilized in a VCO [4]. The VCO uses a
concept which partially relies on the changes in the resis-
tance to attain continuously varying inductance. This resis-
tance however significantly degrades Q of the resonator and
phase noise of the VCO.
In this work, the resistance is minimized using a wide
MOS switching transistor in a 0.18-pm CMOS process to
limit the added resistance below 1 R Through this, the
switched resonator concept has been demonstrated in a dual-
band VCO operating at both 900 MHz and 1.8 GHz bands
-
with phase noise of -123 dBc/Hz at 600 kHz offset which
is almost 15 dB better than the results reported in [4]. In this
VCO, the switched resonator is utilized for coarse tuning and
I I I I
GND
I
Fig. 1. Schematic of a dual-band VCO
another varactor is utilized for fine tuning. This dual-band
VCO with its lower VCO gains should provide added immu-
nity from the phase locked loop (PLL) instability and noise
pick up problems. This concept is not restricted to dual-band
VCO's. A switched resonator can also be used to widen a
tuning range of a single band VCO.
11. Need for a Switched Resonator
A possible way to achieve a wide tuning range is to use
switched capacitor banks in a resonator. To discuss the need
for a switched resonator over a switched capacitor bank,
consider an integrated L-C VCO shown in Figure 1. Because
the quality factor, Qind, of the spiral inductor is significantly
lower than that of the capacitances in the resonator, the
equivalent total parallel resistance, R,, can be approximated
by the equivalent parallel resistance of the inductor, R ~ LFor.
an inductor with series resistance of R,, and inductance of
L, the RpL is approximately m2*L2/RSLor QLnd2*RSL,where
w is the desired oscillation frequency. For oscillation to be
sustained, G,*O~*L'/R~~= GM*Qin2*RsL= 1, where GM
is the effective transconductance of the VCO core transis-
tors.
With the assumption that for a given process technol-
ogy, when inductance changes, its series resistancc also
changes with approximately the same ratio, that is, QL's are
approximately constant, if L or m2L2/RsLis larger, then G,
can be smaller or power consumption of the VCO can be
reduced since GM*w2*Lz/RsL= 1. Because of this, increas-
ing capacitance arbitrarily to tune down the frequency is not
desirable.

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 At the same time, increasing L arbitrary high will
increase the series resistance RSL, and when the core voltage
swing is near the maximum which is the typical operating
condition, this will limit the phase noise performance. This is
also undesirable and points to a need for a switched resona-
50
tor in which both L and C can be tuned. The phase noise lim- 1.8 G H z
40
itation imposed by arbitrarily increasing L can be illustrated
using the Leeson-Cutler phase noise equation[5]-[7] shown "00 05 10 15 20 25

below: Vinductor

k is Boltzmann's constant, T i s the absolute temperature, F is

noise factor of the core transistors/amplifiers, P, is the aver- 05 l.8GHz
age power dissipated in the oscillation tank, w0 is the oscilla- ,-0
tion frequency, QL is the total quality factor of the tank, AO
is the offset from the carrier, and A01,j is the corner fre-
quency between the 1/4 and 1 8 regions. P, can be repre-
sented as Vrm:/Rp where V,, is the root mean square
voltage across the tank. Since the total parallel resistances in
the tadk can be approximated QL2*RsL, substituting this
back into the above equation, phase noise can be expressed
as
L ( A o ) = lO.log{ 4kTFRsLQi[I

Vrms
+(&--7(1 +*a)}
This equation can be further simplified to

When the voltage swing is near the maximum, phase noise is

only determined by the noise factor and R s ~
The noise factor of the amplifier in the VCO, F
decreases as G, is increased because the voltage gain of the
amplifier is proportional to GM while the added noise is pro-
portional to a square-root of Gnn From GM*Qind2*RsL=1, as
R , or L is decreased while keeping Qindapproximately con-
stant, G, increases and F decreases. Therefore, the phase
noise decreases as RsL or L is decreased.
For instance, if L is chosen for the higher frequency
band, if the same L is used for the lower frequency band
using a large switched capacitor bank, the power consump-
tion set by the requirement at the lower frequency band will
be un-necessarily high for the higher frequency band. On the
other hand, if L is chosen for the lower frequency band then
phase noise performance at the higher frequency band will
be compromised. These mean a tuning element in which
both L and C can be simultaneously tuned provides a greater
flexibility to trade-off phase noise and power consumption,
as well as to achieve given phase noise performance over a
larger frequency range.

In. A Switched Resonator

Figure 2 shows a switched resonator. The inductance
seen between ports 1 and 2 are changed by turning M4 on
and off. When the transistor is off, the inductance is approxi-
mately the sum of L1 and L2. The actual combined induc-
tance is somewhat lower due to the effects of CGD in series
IV. Design of the Dual-Band VCO
In the dual-band VCO, on top of the conventional
PMOS VCO core composed of M1 and M2 and buffers com-
posed of M6 and M7 [9], there are transistors M4 and M.5,
and inductors L2 and L4. By controlling the gate voltage

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 - 1.8 -
0
Center Frequency: 1.812GHz

AA**
2
b 1.6
' AoOoo
h -20
A* E
I : 0
5 -40
~F1.4. A VCO without switched resonator
L
high band of dual-band VCO
low band of dual-band VCO -60
a
ooooooooocQoM3000M30~~0 -80
-100
o-60.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5 3.0 3.5
Vcontml [VI Offset (KHz)
Fig. 3. Measured tuning range -50
-60
-70
-
N
-80
5
m
-90
p, -100
.s
0
-110
G
-120
8 -130
-140

1o4 1o5 1o6

Frequency offset from carrier
1o4 1o5 106
Frequency offset from carrier (864.8 MHz) Fig. 5. phase noise of dual-band VCO at high band.
Fig. 4. phase noise of dual-band VCO at low band. and -123 dBc/Hz at a 600-kHz offset from a 1.812-GHz car-
(Vinductor)of M4 and M5, inductance of the tanks can be rier for the high band (Figure 5). In addition, a 1.8-GHz
controlled. L1 and L3 are 3.5 nH, and L2 and L4 are 5.2 nH. VCO without a switched resonator has been fabricated for
When M4 and M5 are off, the inductance of the tanks is - 8 performance comparison. The phase noise of' this single-
nH and C,, is - 1.3 pF, and the VCO operates in the 0.8- band VCO is -123 dBc/Hz at a 600-kHz offset from a 1.894
GHz band. When M4 and M5 are on, the inductance of the GHz carrier (Figure 6) which is almost the same as the phase
tanks is - 3.5 nH and Cpl is -0.3 pF, and the VCO operates noise of the dual-band VCO at the high band. The power
in the 1.8 GHz band. Fine tuning of the VCO is accom- consumption of both the single and dual-band VCO's with a
plished using p+-n-well varactor diodes. 1.8-V supply is 16 mW. The measured results are summa-
rized in Table 1. The measured phase noise is 3-4 dB higher
V. Experimental Results
Referring to Figure 3, the tuning range for the 0.8-GHz Table 1: VCO Characteristics at Vnn=1.8 V.
band is between 0.753 and 0.867 GHz over the Vcontrolrange Dual-band vco
between 0.5 and 3.6V, which corresponds to a 13-% tuning Dual-band
Parameter vco vco without
range. However, the phase noise is flat and low only for fre- (high switched
quencies between 0.823 to 0.867 GHz, which corresponds to (low band) band) resonator
a 5-% working tuning range. The tuning range for the 1.8- I I I I I
GHz band is 1.381 to 1.814 GHz over the VContro~ range I Corecurrent I 8.97mA I 8.8mA I 8.8mA I
between 0.4 and 3.6V, which corresponds to a 24-% tuning
rangc. However, once again, phase noise is flat and low only
for frequencies between 1.640 and 1.8 14 GHz, which corre-
sponds to a 9-% working tuning range. These reductions in
the working tuning range are due to the forward-biasing of
the p-n varactor, and this problem can be alleviated by using
a MOS varactor [lo].
I Inductance

Tuning
Range (MHz)

Phase Noise @
600KHz offset
1 !-1 1 I
I 8 nH

867
-125dBc/
I 3.5 nH
-
1814 (174)

-123dBcl
I 3.2 nH
1729 -
I896 (167)

-123dBc/
Hz
I

The measured phase noise for the low band is -125 dBc/
Hz at a 600-kHz offset from a 0.865-GHz carrier (Figure 4), ~i~ size("2) I 1.30x0.69 I 1.30x0.69 I 0.86x0.68

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 Center Frequency: 1.894GHz
0

h -20
E
-40
L

-60
a
-80

-100
600 0 600
Offset (KHz)
-50
-60
Fig. 7. Chip micrograph of dual-band VCO
-70
-80 Acknowledgment
2m -90 The authors are grateful to Dr. Jie Zheng, Phil N. Sher-
9 -100 man, Bill Krieger, and Paul Kempf of Conexant Systems for
w their help. The authors also thank Nam-Kyu Park for the 1J
.Y
0
-110 noise measurements. This work was supported by a grant
120
i- from Conexant Systems.
-130
-140 References
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