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Low-power Gm-boosted complementary Colpitts LC-VCO/QVCO

  • Mixed Signal Letter
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Abstract

In this work, a new differential topology of Colpitts VCO with an enhanced transconductance is presented. The proposed circuit is consisted of an NMOS and a PMOS differential Colpitts cores configured as complementary, and also an LC resonator. The VCO is designed to oscillate at 5 GHz which consumes 1.11 VA from 1.4 V supply voltage. In addition, a modified version of the proposed VCO is designed for lower power applications. This circuit employs new positive feedbacks to enhance the VCO’s transconductance and reduce the supply voltage. The modified VCO operates with 1.1 V power supply while dissipating 1 mW. To investigate the performance of the proposed circuits, the transconductance of them are theoretically analyzed. Also, two new quadrature VCOs (QVCOs) are presented which are realized by two identical latter proposed Colpitts VCOs. A linear analysis is presented to confirm that the first oscillator can generate outputs with 90° phase differences. The proposed circuits are designed in 0.18-μm RF-CMOS technology. Finally, prototype circuits of the proposed VCOs are fabricated to validate the theoretical results. The measurement results are summarized to demonstrate the main features of the proposed oscillators.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Electrical Engineering Department, Shahid Bahonar University of Kerman, Kerman, Iran

    Mohammad Jafar Hemmati, Ahmad Hakimi & Sajad Naderi Nejad

  2. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Isfahan University of Technology, Isfahan, Iran

    Rasoul Dehghani

Authors
  1. Mohammad Jafar Hemmati
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  2. Rasoul Dehghani
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  3. Ahmad Hakimi
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  4. Sajad Naderi Nejad
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Correspondence to Mohammad Jafar Hemmati.

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Hemmati, M.J., Dehghani, R., Hakimi, A. et al. Low-power Gm-boosted complementary Colpitts LC-VCO/QVCO. Analog Integr Circ Sig Process 97, 159–168 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10470-018-1288-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10470-018-1288-0

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