A Dual-Mode Wide-Band CMOS Oscillator

Broadband voltage-controlled oscillators are critical to the design of millimeter-wave (mm-wave) frequency synthesizers. This thesis proposes a design technique that can be used to significantly extend the achievable frequency span of an oscillator. A dual-band oscillator topology is described that can be configured to operate in one of two modes, by an electrical reconfiguration of the negative resistance core around the resonant tank, without switching passive elements within the tank itself. The configuration helps to minimize the difference in phase noise performance between the two modes, while achieving a wide tuning range. To verify the concept, an mm-wave VCO that operates at 30 GHz is designed in a commercial 0.18-um CMOS technology, with an approximate simulated tuning range of 20%. A dual-mode oscillator is also designed in 0.13-um CMOS technology at 60 GHz.