An ultra-wideband injection-locked frequency divider with a multi-order resonator and the passive injection-boosted technique

Abstract

This paper presents an ultra-wideband injection-locked frequency divider (ILFD) design which is applicable to a multi-applications system. A transformer-based multi-order resonator is utilized in the ILFD to attain a flat phase response. The passive injection-boosted technique is proposed to increase the injection signal amplitude and thus widen the locking range. With the injection-boosted technique and the multi-order resonator, the proposed ILFD demonstrates a measured locking range of 50 GHz, covering 48 GHz to 98 GHz. The divider designed in a 40-nm process consumes a DC power of 11.2 mW excluding buffers and occupies a core size of 0.38 × 0.63 mm².