1. Ischia, 21-23 giugno 2006Riunione Annuale GE 2006 Università di Catania Facoltà di Ingegneria DIEES Catania - ITALY STMicroelectronics Catania site Low-Phase-Noise 18-GHz Voltage-Controlled Oscillator Angelo Scuderi and Giuseppe Palmisano Radio Frequency Advanced Design Center (RF-ADC) Elettronica delle microonde e delle onde millimetriche – A1

2. Ischia, 21-23 giugno 2006Riunione Annuale GE 2006 Outline VCO for 17-GHz receiver Transformer-based topology High-Q resonator Circuit design Experimental results

3. Ischia, 21-23 giugno 2006Riunione Annuale GE 2006 VCO for 17-GHz receiver HIPERLINK standard exploits the 17-GHz ISM band and will provide a link between local 5-GHz WLANs and metropolitan networks. A multi-band receiver at 5 and 17 GHz allows high-level of integration but requires a local oscillator with wide tuning capabilities and low-noise performance.

4. Ischia, 21-23 giugno 2006Riunione Annuale GE 2006 Transformer-based topology Thanks to a transformer the resonator exploits an inductive coupling, consequently, both biasing resistors (R VV and R BB ) and coupling capacitors (C VV and C BB ) are removed improving phase noise and tuning range, respectively.

5. Ischia, 21-23 giugno 2006Riunione Annuale GE 2006 High-Q resonator An issue of great concern is the fabrication of high-Q resonator in a low-cost bipolar technology (17 mask steps) supplied by STMicroelectronics.

6. Ischia, 21-23 giugno 2006Riunione Annuale GE 2006 Circuit design The VCO is composed of a transformer-based core oscillating at 9 GHz followed by a frequency doubler to obtain a working frequency of 18 GHz. The frequency doubler is composed by a full-wave rectifier and a comparator, whose frequency response was increased by using a zero-peaking technique.

7. Ischia, 21-23 giugno 2006Riunione Annuale GE 2006 Experimental results The VCO exhibits a tuning range of 4.1 GHz from 16.4 to 20.5 GHz, when the control voltage V TUNE sweeps from 0 to 3 V. The measured phase noise is -109 dBc/Hz at 1-MHz offset from a carrier of 18.5 GHz.

8. Ischia, 21-23 giugno 2006Riunione Annuale GE 2006 See you later … Poster A1