CMOS High Swing and Q Boosted Dual Core Voltage Controlled Oscillator for 5G New Radio Application

Authors

  • Pravinah Shasidharan Collaborative Microelectronic Design Excellence Center (CEDEC) Universiti Sains Malaysia, Sains @USM, Bayan Lepas (Penang), 11900, Malaysia
  • Jagadheswaran Rajendran Collaborative Microelectronic Design Excellence Center (CEDEC) Universiti Sains Malaysia, Sains @USM, Bayan Lepas (Penang), 11900, Malaysia
  • Selvakumar Mariappan Collaborative Microelectronic Design Excellence Center (CEDEC) Universiti Sains Malaysia, Sains @USM, Bayan Lepas (Penang), 11900, Malaysia
  • Narendra Kumar Department of Electrical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, 50603 Malaysia
  • Masuri Othman Institute of Microengineering and Nanoelectronics National University of Malaysia Bangi, 43600, Malaysia

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.13052/2023.ACES.J.380610

Keywords:

cascode, CMOS, cross-coupled pair, 5G, New Radio, Q enhancement, switched varactor array (SVA), Voltage Controlled Oscillator

Abstract

This paper describes a low power, low phase noise CMOS voltage controlled oscillator (VCO) with a cascoded cross-coupled pair (XCP) configuration for high data rate 5G New Radio (5G-NR) applications. The core consists of a primary auxiliary VCO built as a negative conductance circuit to improve phase noise and a secondary core with a cascoded formation to increase output voltage swing. A switched varactor array (SVA) wideband tuner is integrated for a wide bandwidth application in a low power implementation. The dual-core VCO was designed in CMOS 130 nm technology and occupies only 1.05 mm2 of space. With a supply voltage of 1.2 V, the VCO achieved a tuning range of 32.43% from 3.45 GHz to 4.47 GHz. At 3.96 GHz carrier center frequency with 1 MHz offset, the total power consumption is 0.7 mW with a corresponding phase noise (PN) of −121.25 dBc/Hz and a Figure of Merit (FoM) of 193.25 dBc/Hz. The results are validated using Cadence Spectra RF simulations.

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Author Biographies

Pravinah Shasidharan, Collaborative Microelectronic Design Excellence Center (CEDEC) Universiti Sains Malaysia, Sains @USM, Bayan Lepas (Penang), 11900, Malaysia

Pravinah Shasidharan is currently pursuing a Ph.D. degree in microelectronics at the Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM), Pulau Pinang. Her research interest is in CMOS RFIC design.

Jagadheswaran Rajendran, Collaborative Microelectronic Design Excellence Center (CEDEC) Universiti Sains Malaysia, Sains @USM, Bayan Lepas (Penang), 11900, Malaysia

Jagadheswaran Rajendran (SM’16) is currently serving as a senior lecturer at the Collaborative Microelectronic Design Excellence Center (CEDEC) and School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Universiti Sains Malaysia. His work is on CMOS analog IC design, CMOS Radio Frequency (RF) IC design and GaAs Monolithic Microwave Integrated Circuit (MMIC) design. To date, he has published 70 research papers, mainly in journals, and holds one US patent. Jagadheswaran Rajendran was the recipient of the IEEE Circuit and System Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation Award in 2015. He served as the Chairman of IEEE ED /MTT/SSC Penang Chapter for the years 2011 and 2018. He is also a senior member of IEEE.

Selvakumar Mariappan, Collaborative Microelectronic Design Excellence Center (CEDEC) Universiti Sains Malaysia, Sains @USM, Bayan Lepas (Penang), 11900, Malaysia

Selvakumar Mariappan received his B. Eng. Tech. Degree (Hons.) in electrical engineering technology from the Technical University of Malaysia Melaka (UTeM) in 2017. He completed his Ph.D. degree in microelectronics system engineering from Universiti Sains Malaysia in 2022. He was a scholarship recipient of the Industry Graduate Research Assistant Scholarship Programme (i-GRASP) from CREST R&D, Malaysia. Selvakumar Mariappan was a post-graduate intern in Silterra Malaysia Sdn. Bhd. from 2018 to 2021 where he was involved in various IC design activities from device modelling to IC measurements. He was with QRF Solutions Sdn. Bhd. from May 2021 to August 2022 as an IC designer where he worked on numerous RFIC design projects. He served as a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Collaborative Microelectronic Design Excellence Center (CEDEC), Universiti Sains Malaysia from September to November 2022 before being promoted to Senior Lecturer there in December 2022.

Narendra Kumar, Department of Electrical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, 50603 Malaysia

Narendra Kumar received his doctorate degree in electrical engineering from RWTH Technical University Aachen, Aachen, Germany. From early 1999 he was with Motorola Solutions, holding the position of Principal Staff Engineer (product development and testing). Since January 2011 he has been a Visiting Professor to Istanbul University. Since August 2013, he has been with the Department of Electrical Engineering at the University of Malaya, serving as an Associate Professor. He holds three US patents and four defensive patents in the area of microwave power amplifiers, all assigned to Motorola Solutions. He has authored more than 80 papers in technical journals and conferences, and three technical books published in the USA.

Masuri Othman, Institute of Microengineering and Nanoelectronics National University of Malaysia Bangi, 43600, Malaysia

Masuri Othman received his master’s degree in optoelectronics from the University of Essex, UK, and his Ph.D. degree in microelectronics from the University of Southampton, UK. His main research interests are intheareas of microelectronics and IC design, energy harvesters and technology planning and commercialization. He joined the National University of Malaysia in 1978, was promoted to an Associate Professor in 1989, and subsequently in 1996 to the post of a Professor in microelectronics. He was the Deputy Director of the Institute of Micro and Nanoelectronics (IMEN), UKM, from 2004 to 2006. He was on secondment to the Malaysian Institute of Microelectronics (MIMOS) from 2005 to 2011 as the Director of MEMS and Nanotechnology and at the same time has produced more than 20 patents mainly in the areas of MEMS and energy harvesting. From 2011 to 2014, he was the Commercialization Director at the Ministry of Science and Technology, Malaysia. In 2016, he rejoined IMEN with the main task of spearheading frontier research as well as the technology commercialization of the research and development. During his tenure he has produced more than 100 research papers and has won several national awards in his research areas.

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Published

2023-06-30

How to Cite

[1]
P. . Shasidharan, J. . Rajendran, S. . Mariappan, N. . Kumar, and M. . Othman, “CMOS High Swing and Q Boosted Dual Core Voltage Controlled Oscillator for 5G New Radio Application”, ACES Journal, vol. 38, no. 06, pp. 457–465, Jun. 2023.

Issue

2023: Vol 38 Iss 6

Section

General Submission

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