A Low-Phase-Noise Quadrature Voltage Oscillator with Peak Coupling Injection Technique in 0.13 μm SiGe BiCMOS

Abstract

This letter proposes a peak coupling injection (PCI) technique to achieve low-phase-noise in a quadrature voltage-controlled oscillator (QVCO). By precisely injecting the coupling current at the peak of the oscillation waveform, the impulse sensitivity function (ISF) is minimized at the moment of current injection, thus significantly improving the phase noise of QVCO. The proposed PCI-QVCO is designed and verified using 0.13 µm SiGe BiCMOS technology. Measurement results indicated that our PCI-QVCO has a phase noise of -91 dBc/Hz at 1-MHz offset from 13 GHz, with a power consumption of 38 mW and a figure of merit (FOM) of -157 dBc/Hz. The die area is 0.70×0.87 mm².