Current-Reuse Active Inductor-Based VCO for Reconfigurable RF Front-End

Abstract

This paper deals with the design of a current-reuse active inductor. Current-reuse active inductor-based voltage-controlled oscillator (CRAI-VCO) with a wide tuning range is designed based on the proposed active inductor. The tuning range of VCO is from 1.25 to 2.5 GHz giving a tuning percentage of 68% at a power consumption of 5 mW. The phase noise obtained is −100 dBc/Hz. The post-layout simulations are carried out in Cadence Virtuoso using UMC 180 nm RFCMOS technology. The circuit occupies an active area of 143 µm × 148 µm. The figure of merit of VCO considering the frequency tuning range is −177.3 dBc/Hz comparable to other state-of-the-art VCO designs.

Keywords:

• Active inductor
• Gyrator
• Negative resistance
• Reconfigurable
• Tuning range
• Voltage-controlled oscillator

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Lakshmi Nediyara Suresh

Lakshmi Nediyara Suresh received BTech in electronics and communication engineering in 2010 from Mahatma Gandhi University Kerala, India. She received MTech in VLSI and embedded systems in 2012 from the same university. She is currently pursuing PhD in the Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering in the National Institute of Technology Tiruchirappalli, India. Her area of research is RFIC design.

Bhaskar Manickam

Bhaskar Manickam received BE in electronics and communication engineering from Bharathiyar University, Tamil Nadu, in 1992 and ME in microwave and optical engineering from Madurai Kamaraj University, Tamil Nadu, India in 1995. He has received the PhD degree in electronics and communication engineering from the National Institute of Technology Tiruchirappalli, India in 2015. Currently he is working as a professor in the Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering, National Institute of Technology Tiruchirappalli. His research interests include DSP architecture, VLSI system design, and low power VLSI. Email: [email protected]