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Analysis and Design of a Multi-Core Oscillator for Ultra-Low Phase Noise

2016-03-11, Ahmadi-Mehr, S. Amir-Reza, Tohidian, Massoud, Staszewski, Robert Bogdan

In this paper, we exploit an idea of coupling multiple oscillators to reduce phase noise (PN) to beyond the limit of what has been practically achievable so far in a bulk CMOS technology. We then apply it to demonstrate for the first time an RF oscillator that meets the most stringent PN requirements of cellular basestation receivers while abiding by the process technology reliability rules. The oscillator is realized in digital 65-nm CMOS as a dualcore LC-tank oscillator based on a high-swing class-C topology. It is tunable within 4.07-4.91 GHz, while drawing 39-59 mA from a 2.15 V power supply. The measured PN is -146.7 dBc/Hz and -163.1 dBc/Hz at 3 MHz and 20 MHz offset, respectively, from a 4.07 GHz carrier, which makes it the lowest reported normalized PN of an integrated CMOS oscillator. Straightforward expressions for PN and interconnect resistance between the cores are derived and verified against circuit simulations and measurements. Analysis and simulations show that the interconnect resistance is not critical even with a 1% mismatch between the cores. This approach can be extended to a higher number of cores and achieve an arbitrary reduction in PN at the cost of the power and area.

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A Tiny Quadrature Oscillator Using Low-Q Series LC Tanks

2015-08, Tohidian, Massoud, Ahmadi-Mehr, S. Amir-Reza, Staszewski, Robert Bogdan

A new quadrature oscillator topology is proposed, which arranges four low-Q series LC tanks in a ring structure driven by inverters operating in class-D. With a very small area of 0.007 that is comparable to conventional ring oscillators, this oscillator has 7–20 dB better phase noise FoM of 177 dB. It is widely tunable for nearly an octave from 2.66 to 4.97 GHz.