A 22 nm CMOS Low-Phase-Noise LC Voltage-Controlled Oscillator

Li weiye, Huang peiwen, Liu kaiyuan, Shen rensheng, Chang yuchun

Integrated Circuits and Embedded Systems ›› 0

Integrated Circuits and Embedded Systems ›› 0 DOI: 10.20193/j.ices2097-4191.2026.0017

A 22 nm CMOS Low-Phase-Noise LC Voltage-Controlled Oscillator

  • Li weiye, Huang peiwen, Liu kaiyuan, Shen rensheng, Chang yuchun
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Abstract

This paper presents a wideband low-phase-noise voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO) implemented in a 22 nm CMOS advanced process for high-performance frequency synthesis systems requiring both wide tuning range and low phase noise. The proposed VCO adopts a complementary cross-coupled topology and incorporates a transformer-coupled common-mode noise-suppression network at the sources, which establishes a high impedance at the second harmonic to suppress flicker-noise upconversion and improve oscillation waveform symmetry. In addition, a 3-bit programmable source capacitance is introduced for adaptive phase-noise optimization. To alleviate the inherent tradeoff between wide frequency coverage and low VCO gain, a hybrid tuning scheme combining 10-bit switched-capacitor coarse tuning with varactor-based fine tuning is employed. Operating from a 1.2 Vsupply, the proposed VCO consumes 3.35 mW and occupies an area of 0.185 mm². It achieves a continuous tuning range of 6.07–8.50 GHz and exhibits a phase noise of −122.1 to −120.6 dBc/Hz at a 1-MHz offset frequency.

Key words

Voltage-controlled oscillator / source inductance / phase-locked loop / phase noise / switched-capacitor array

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Li weiye, Huang peiwen, Liu kaiyuan, Shen rensheng, Chang yuchun. A 22 nm CMOS Low-Phase-Noise LC Voltage-Controlled Oscillator[J]. Integrated Circuits and Embedded Systems. 0 https://doi.org/10.20193/j.ices2097-4191.2026.0017

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