A 1/f Noise Upconversion Reduction Technique for Voltage-Biased RF CMOS Oscillators

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Abstract

In this paper, we propose a method to reduce a flicker (1/f) noise upconversion in voltage-biased RF oscillators. Excited by a harmonically rich tank current, a typical oscillation voltage waveform is observed to have asymmetric rise and fall times due to even-order current harmonics flowing into the capacitive part, as it presents the lowest impedance path. The asymmetric oscillation waveform results in an effective impulse sensitivity function of a nonzero dc value, which facilitates the 1/f noise upconversion into the oscillator's 1/f3 phase noise. We demonstrate that if the ω0 tank exhibits an auxiliary resonance at 2 ω0, thereby forcing this current harmonic to flow into the equivalent resistance of the 2 ω0 resonance, then the oscillation waveform would be symmetric and the flicker noise upconversion would be largely suppressed. The auxiliary resonance is realized at no extra silicon area in both inductor-and transformer-based tanks by exploiting different behaviors of inductors and transformers in differential-and common-mode excitations. These tanks are ultimately employed in designing modified class-D and class-F oscillators in 40 nm CMOS technology. They exhibit an average flicker noise corner of less than 100 kHz.

Original languageEnglish
Article number7571191
Pages (from-to)2610-2624
Number of pages15
JournalIEEE Journal of Solid State Circuits
Volume51
Issue number11
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2016

Keywords

  • Class-D oscillator
  • class-F oscillator
  • digitally controlled oscillator
  • flicker noise
  • flicker noise upconversion
  • impulse sensitivity function (ISF)
  • phase noise (PN)
  • voltage-biased RF oscillator

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