A Very Low Phase-Noise Voltage-Controlled-Oscillator at X-Band
Morteza Nick, and Amir Mortazawi
Department ofElectrical Engineering and Computer Science
University ofMichigan, Ann Arbor, ML 48109, USA
Abstract - An X-band veo is designed by employing a
compact tunable high-Q negative-resistance resonator. The
implemented active resonator not only provides a high degree of
frequency-selectivity, but also initiates and sustains the
oscillations. The loaded-quality-factor of the resonator is 510. As
a result, a simple and compact veo has been designed by
eliminating the need for the parallel feedback amplifier and
external load coupling network. Therefore, size and De power
consumption are significantly reduced without degrading the
phase-noise performance. The fabricated veo operates at 8.2
GHz with 105 MHz tuning range. It shows a measured phase­
noise of -149.5 dBclHz at 1 MHz frequency offset, and achieves a
figure-of-merit (FOM) value of -211.7 dBclHz. To the best of
author's knowledge, the veo presented in this pa per achieves
the lowest phase-noise and FOM compared to other planar
oscillators reported to date.
Index Terms - Active resonator, dual-mode resonator, elliptic
filter, oscillator, phase noise, quality factor.
I. INTRODUCTION
As the worldwide wireless market sees continued growth,
the demand for compact and low-cost low phase-noise
oscillators has become stronger. Microwave oscillators are
conventionally designed by providing parallel or series
feedback to an active device, as shown in Fig. l(a). Usually, a
frequency-selective element, such as a resonator or a bandpass
filter, is used in the feedback network. According to Leeson's
linear model [1], phase-noise is proportional to the inverse­
square of the resonator's loaded-quality-factor (QL).
Unfortunately, due to the high dielectric, conductor and
radiation losses, the quality factors of the available planar
resonators are limited; leading to oscillator's phase-noise
degradation. Therefore, despite numerous efforts [2-6], the
design of low-phase-noise compact planar oscillators is still
very challenging.
Previously [6], we reported on the design of an oscillator
using a high-Q active resonator in its parallel feedback loop,
which achieved a record low phase-noise performance for
planar oscillators. In this paper, we introduce a new design
technique that offers significant advantages in terms of
tunability, DC power consumption and size while achieving a
similar state-of-the-art phase-noise performance. The
oscillator's core is a reactively-terminated active filter, acting
as a high-Q negative-resistance resonator, which provides
high frequency selectivity and, at the same time, initiates and
sustains the oscillation (Fig. l(b». Here, we take advantage of
the active filter's instability to design a low phase-noise
oscillator. A dual-mode square loop resonator is used for the
compact filter design. The two resonant modes are coupled to
each other to form an elliptic response band-pass filter. Two
active devices are incorporated in the filter design to over­
compensate the losses of the resonant modes, causing
instability. When properly designed, oscillation occurs at the
filter's pass-band edge where it exhibits the highest frequency
selectivity, resulting in the lowest phase-noise. In contrast to
the previous designs [4-6], there is neither a need for an extra
amplifier in the oscillator loop, nor for a coupler to deliver
power to the external load.
The new approach is experimentally verified by
designing a voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO) at 8.2 GHz.
The VCO demonstrates a measured phase noise of -149.5
dBclHz at 1 MHz frequency offset with 2 dB variations within
a tuning range of 105 MHz. The output power level is 7 dBm
with 12.5% DC-RF efficiency. The VCO's figure-of merit
(FOM) is -21l.7 dBclHz. To the best of author's knowledge,
this oscillator achieves the lowest phase-noise and FOM
values among published works on planar oscillators. The
VCO could be designed to occupy an area as small as 1J8 x
1J8, making it suitable for the design of compact hybrid or
integrated circuits.
II. COMPACT HIGH- Q NEGATIVE-R RESONATOR DESIGN
The proposed resonator's structure and its equivalent circuit
are shown in Fig. 2. It consists of an active filter whose
second port is terminated with a reactive element OXT). The
reactive termination converts the two-port active filter to a
single-port high-Q negative-resistance resonator.
A compact filter can be designed by employing a dual-mode
square loop resonator with two degenerate resonant modes
along its horizontal and vertical axis [7].
In our design, the filter's input and output ports are coupled
to both resonant modes through offset-to-center feeding lines.
The resonant modes are coupled to each other by the patch
perturbations at resonator's two inner comers. The
combination of the resonant modes cross-coupling along with
the asymmetric feeds allows for a pseudo-elliptic band-pass
response between the input and output ports. A pseudo-elliptic
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 ResonatorlBPF

jX,
Input
reflection
coefficient Horizontal
(a) (b) o e

Fig. I Block diagram of (a) a conventional parallel feedback Port 1 iX,

oscillator, and (b) the proposed oscillator.

Port 2
r- ------------
band-pass response is desired since it improves the frequency
: jXT Reactive
selectivity by introducing a close-to-passband zero in the :
,
Termination
,
transfer function [5]. The square resonator shown in Fig. 2(a) 1_- ______________
occupies an area of A/4XA/4, where A is the wavelength.
(a)
However, the size can be reduced to A/8XA/8 by using a
meandered-line square resonator [7].
In the circuit of Fig. 2, each resonant mode is coupled to a
negative-resistance device for loss compensation. The
negative-resistance devices are implemented by using series
feedback at the emitter terminals of SiGe HBT transistors in a
common base configuration. The loss compensation networks
(b)
are designed such that they over-compensate the losses of the
resonators; namely, the amount of energy produced by the Fig. 2 (a) A reactively terminated dual-mode active filter used as a
active devices exceeds the energy loss within the resonators. high-Q negative-resistance resonator for oscillator designs. (b)
Therefore, the active filter is made unstable having a Equivalent circuit of the filter. Each resonant mode is modeled with
reflection coefficient of larger than unity. The instability can a shunt -rLC network. The negative resistance, -r, indicates the
over-compensation of the losses by active devices.
be enhanced by terminating the filter's second port with a
reactive termination, XT• The microstrip filter shown in Fig.
2(a) was designed on a 32 mils thick R4003C substrate and
20 '---�--�-----"" ,

]J�
"
simulated using Agilent's Momentum EM solver. The 1 1 ,.
'
I
\ ,
15

�-----�! i
simulated active filter's input reflection coefficient is shown L

in Fig. 3, where a band-pass elliptic response is observed EO

� 10 " , -,
when the filter's second port is matched terminated. Fig. 3 C \1 :
-R
also depicts the filter's frequency response when its second .� 5
" I
,
,
-\ I

port is reactively terminated. As it can be seen, the reactive �

Q)
termination causes a strong peak in the input reflection 0
8 r---:---=:::-""
-
c
coefficient. The location of the peak depends on the o -5
termination value. The value of XT is optimized such that the n
peak occurs at the filter's pass-band edge for highest �
Q)
-10
,
r
,
r

frequency selectivity. --Reactive Termination

� -15 -- Matched Termination
At the vicinity of the peak reflection coefficient, the c

reactively-terminated active filter behaves like a high-Q LC -20

7.7 7.8 7.9 8.1 82 8.3
resonator having a negative resistance in shunt, as shown in Frequency (GHz)
the inset of Fig. 4. Based on the simulated reflection
coefficient's phase-response, the active resonator achieves a Fig. 3 Input reflection coefficient of the active filter with reactive
loaded quality factor of 510. This value is about six times and matched termination at the second port. The reactive
higher than that of a passive single resonator implemented on termination causes a strong peak in the input reflection coefficient.

the same substrate. Therefore, it can be used in the design of

low phase-noise oscillators as discussed in the next section.
In active resonators and filters, the transistors introduce
excess noise whose effects should be minimized for low-noise
applications. This can be accomplished by providing proper
reactive terminations to the emitter and base terminals of the
transistors. The optimum emitter/base reactance values were
determined based on the procedure introduced in [8].
Matching-networks are then used to transform the drain

978-1-61284-757-3/11/$26.00 C2011 IEEE

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GHz. Phase noise at I MHz offset from the carrier is about -
149.5 dBc/Hz.

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N
I
U
co
I u
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I
I
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'"
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c;,
coupled to the resonator to provide frequency tuning c:
·iii
8.1 ·152
(circuitry at the center of the resonator), 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 10
Tuning voltage (v)

impedances to the negative-resistance values required for the

active filter design, Fig. 6 Measured characteristics of the YCO versus varactors'
tuning voltage. Phase-noise is measured at 1 MHz frequency
offset.

III. LOW PHASE-NOISE YCO FABRICATION AND
MEASURMENT
The fabricated YCO is shown in Fig, 4, consisting of the
high-Q negative-resistance resonator described in the previous
section, and the external load matching network. Two
NESG2030M04 SiGe HBT transistors with 2 dB noise-figure
and 8 dB associated gain were used to design the negative­
resistance devices for the active resonator. The external load
matching network steps up the 50 n load impedance to twice
the absolute value of the active filter's negative input
impedance, in order to guarantee oscillation start up. Four
MA46H120 hyperabrupt varactor diodes with capacitance
range of 0.2-1 pF and quality factor of 15 were attached to the
resonant modes, for frequency tuning. The varactors' control
voltage of 1-10 volts simultaneously changes the frequency of
resonator's coupled modes, thereby tuning the oscillation
frequency.
The measured oscillation frequency range is 8.150-8.255
GHz. The output power level varies from 6 to 8 dBm across
the tuning range, while DC-RF efficiency varies from 9 to12.5
%. In this design, the tuning range is mainly limited due to the
narrowband response of the negative-resistance devices used
in the active filter. Higher tuning ranges could be achieved
through a more broadband negative-resistance circuit design.
The YCO's phase-noise is measured by the FM
discriminator technique using an Agilent's E5500A phase­
noise measurement system. As shown in Fig. 5, the YCO
shows a measured phase-noise of -149.5 dBc/Hz at 1 MHz
frequency offset at 8.2 GHz. The flicker phase-noise comer
frequency is approximately 90 KHz. The phase-noise and
power variations across the tuning range are plotted in Fig. 6.
To the best of author's knowledge, the YCO presented here
demonstrates the lowest phase-noise among microwave planar
oscillators reported to date. The figure-of-merit (FOM) of the

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 TABLE I
COMPARISON WITH OTHER REPORTED PLANAR OSCILLATORS
Device Resonator Fo Po Tuning Range Efficiency L(f)t FOM
GHz dBm MHz dBc/Hz dBc/Hz
.

HEMT [2] Ring 12 5.3 510 48.7% -116.2 -189.3

Si BJT [3] Hair-Pin 9 9 270 4.5% -129 -185.6

HEMT [4] Active resonator 10 10 120 2% -134.4 -187.4
SiGe HBT [5] Passive elliptic filter 8.1 3.5 - 10% -143 -207
SiGe HBT [6] Active elliptic filter 8 10 - 5% -150 -205
SI BJT [9] Microstrip 9.95 7 54 2.5% -134 -191
�iGe HBT [This Work] High-Q negative-resistance 8.2 7 105 12.5% -149.5 -211.7

t Phase-Noise at 1 MHz frequency offset * Mechanical tuning

oscillator can be calculated using [10]

REFERENCES
f D
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978-1-61284-757-3/11/$26.00 C2011 IEEE